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List:       debian-user
Subject:    Re: flakey wifi access
From:       ken <gebser () mousecar ! com>
Date:       2014-06-30 10:39:29
Message-ID: 53B13E61.2010200 () mousecar ! com
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On 06/29/2014 10:50 PM tom arnall wrote:
> my wicd agent is unable to connect to wifi at mcDonald's, both in
> mexico and the states. it's fine with my home wifi and the coffee shop
> i go to. it also fails on the network at the campus where i teach in
> mexico.

"Unable to connect" can mean a lot of things.  I recently had a wifi 
connection problem which, using 'ping', I determined to be caused by a 
lot of packets being dropped-- like 30 - 60% of them.  I found that ping 
will return a response in some cases even when it seems there is no 
connection.  You'll need to find out the IP address of the access point 
(AP).  If your system doesn't tell you this, you might ask some other 
user.  Get rates from all APs, working and non-working, and compare them.

Another utility to use is tcpdump.  This will provide very detailed 
information about the packets constituting the connection attempt.

And iwlist will provide info on the available APs.  Noting the relative 
signal strengths and protocols used and other details might point to 
patterns.


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