Friday, January 14, 2005

WiFi Tips under SuSE 9.2 Professional

When I went looking for a WiFi card for my notebook I brought my notebook with me and asked various retailers if I could test their WiFi cards in my machine. Some said no, but a surprisingly equal amount said yes. Out of 6 cards, only 1 configured itself without me having to install a driver. Needless to say, I ended up buying the card that I could simply plug-and-play. That card is as follows:

Symbol Technologies Model: LA-4121-1100-1C
Nortel Networks eMobility 802.11b Wireless DSSS PC Card

One of the things I learned trying to set up WiFi on my notebook is that it seems that regular ethernet apparently conflicts with the WiFi routing. I say apparently because I haven't looked into it enough, but it seems to me that it shouldn't, and that those who told me are in fact mistaken.

Regardless, I've disabled regular ethernet and created a "PROFILE" for WiFi, so all I have to do to switch between ethernet and WiFi is change profiles.

Another pointer is to make sure when you're configuring your WiFi card that in Hostname and name server configuration you have selected the box for Update name servers and search list by DHCP.

No comments: