Wireless Roaming
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WARNING: This is a new page.
This is a new page, and might contain technically incorrect information. Please use at your own risk. If you are able to correct any errors or expand this document, please do so.
Warning: This is a Debian-centric page
This page is written by a Debian user with Debian in mind. Thus, he liberally uses apt-get, and assumes that
everything will work exactly the same for you.
If you don't run Debian (or something based on it like Ubuntu), it won't, so please find the differences and add them to this page.
Contents |
Assumptions
I am assuming that you are using Debian (or a system with /etc/network/interfaces), and have a
Wireless Extensions compatable Wiretless card (most are, including ndiswrapper).
I also assume that you don't want to do this with a GUI, you want to edit the config and then have Debian do the work for you...
Setting up guessnet
First things first, we need to know when we are on which network, so
apt-get install guessnet
Now, guessnet by default doesn't work, we need to hack something :-)
cd /usr/share/guessnet/test mv test-wireless test-wireless-deb cp test-wireless-scan test-wireless
Right that should work now.
About guessnet
Guessnet is a pretty cool program that hooks into /etc/network/interfaces as a mapping driver, thus we say (in /etc/network/interfaces):
#iface wlan0 # blah blah blah, comment out this bit - we replace it with a mapping mapping wlan0 script /usr/sbin/guessnet-ifupdown map default: dhcp map timeout: 5 map verbose: true iface dhcp intet dhcp
Now this means that when you bring up wlan0, it will try and find a matching rule, if it doesn't it will use DHCP and any random Access Point.
Now for some rules:
iface home inet dhcp wireless-mode managed wireless-essid TuxHome wireless-key s:tuxtuxtuxtuxt test wireless essid TuxHome
This is pretty straightforward: if guessnet sees an AP called TuxHome (test line), it will use this set of rules.
These rules tell it that we want to only use the TuxHome AP (not your neighbour's dodgy dial-up network), and the correct password (remember that these should be exactly 13 characters long to work ubiquitously).
Now how about some more rules:
iface office inet static address 10.125.3.24 netmask 255.255.224.0 wireless-mode managed wireless-essid EvilCompany wireless-key s:free-wireless test wireless essid EvilCompany
