SMC 2632 (PLX) Ad-hoc mode fails

[Jim Carter]

On Mon, 15 Apr 2002, Thomas Leineweber wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 02:52:18PM -0700, Jim Carter wrote:
> > ... Try this command line:
> > iwconfig eth0 essid OM79 mode Ad-Hoc channel 3
>
> I did not set the channel explicitly. Is it necessary?

It's my impression that in Ad-Hoc mode, the cards will not find each other
unless the channel is set (to the same value) on both.  However, just
recently I discovered that the Windoze-XP driver for the Dell 1150 (Agere
Orinoco) can find an Ad-Hoc network without being told the channel.

> I did a complete debug-run of the first of the two cards (The second
> will come this week, I have not access all the time). You can
> find it at
>
>   http://www.ufc.uni-dortmund.de/~thomas/iwconfig-init-thomas

I took a look.  As I understand it, the channel is not actually set until
the interface is brought up, but when you do iwconfig, you see what's in
the actual hardware, not what's going to be in it when the interface comes
up.

Since the cell ID is your card's own MAC address, it must have been the
first or only card in the Ad-Hoc network.  In other words, if there was
another card, yours didn't find it.  Might the other card be on a different
channel?

Unfortunately I don't know enough to interpret the link status events.

James F. Carter          Voice 310 825 2897    FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet;  6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA  90095-1555
Email: jimc at math.ucla.edu    http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)