Dell D610 Wireless LAN Failure
A while ago the wireless signal strength meter on the family iMac G5 started dropping, and sometimes no LAN connection was available after login. Wireless access points had started showing up in the neighbourhood.
Reconfiguring the wireless access point to use channel 12 instead of the default channel 6 fixed the iMac’s LAN issues. But, it killed wireless connectivity on the Dell D610 notebook, which is running Ubuntu Dapper.
This lead to a wild goose chase looking for channel settings in the Network Administration tool. No such animal exists (nor is it needed). Google and the Web to the rescue. This command:
> iwlist eth1 channelrevealed that the wireless card in the notebook only supports channels 01 to 11 in the 2.4 Ghz band. When the access point was configured to use channel 11 both the iMac and Dell notebook worked as expected.
The “lspci” command lists the notebook’s wireless card as:
Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2915ABG MiniPCI Adapter (rev 05)
Planeta Ubuntu » Dell D610 Wireless LAN Failure — 6 January 2007, 01:51