[Klug-general] Wireless networking

[Michael. E. Rentell]

Good day all,

I wonder if someone could advise me about wireless networking under 
Mandriva 10.2, or proffer any other useful advice.

I have treated myself to a Belkin 802.11g wireless router and a 
compatible Belkin PCMCIA card for my laptop.

It all installed faultlessly under the dominion of the Boy God so there 
are no hardware problems. It works fine under Windows.

The router has declared itself to be 192.168.2.1, so I have set up my 
desktop computer to be 192.168.2.2 and that works fine under Linux. It 
is wired through a network card to the router which is also wired to the 
NTL cable modem for broadband Internet access.

The wireless bit is to the laptop so that I can use it around the house. 
There is the problem, it seems on the verge of establishing a link and 
then fails.

I am not clever enough to tweak text config files under bare Linux and 
so I am using the GUI offerings in Mandriva 10.2. I reckon I have got 
all I can from the router's set-up parameters and put them into the 
screens available under the Linux setup but there are some extra ones 
which baffle me.

For instance, what are the parameters RTS/CTS and Fragmentation? Anybody 
any idea what I should put into those two boxes.

Also there are things like: Sensitivity Threshold, lwconfig lwspy and 
lwpnw command extra arguments

I have put in what parameters I can find in the Windows setup and then 
click the Mandriva network wizard to set up the network and the cards 
power light comes on and stays on (so the PCMCIA bit functions) and then 
the connection light flickers but then it goes out and stays out and 
there is no connection.

It seems like there is a failure in the handshake. Any comments or 
advice would be most gratefully received.

Regards to all

Mike Rentell in Folkestone.