Setting up the Hardware
This page contains infromation on how to set
up your WaveLan wireless network adapter
to use it with the wireless network in the Gates Computer Science Building.
How this works mainly depends on which operating system you use. Currently
we have instructions for:
If you are using it with another operating
system please let us know so we can include the information here. If your
hardware allready works go to the SPINACH pages.
Windows
95
The installation should be easy as
Window's plug-and-play architecture can identify the WaveLAN card and install
the drivers automatically. After installing the drivers check in the control
panel in network that the hardware driver exists. It should look like the
entry in the requester to the right.
|
 |
Next select the WaveLan Driver Properties
and check in the advanced section that the parameters that the parameters
are set to the values to the right. It does not matter to what the Station
ID and Station name are set to.
To test if your windows hardware installation
worked you can use the diagnostic utility that is included on the disk
that comes with the WaveLan card. |
:Parameter |
Value |
Domain ID |
0001 |
Beacon Key |
0000 |
Encryption |
Disabled |
Roaming |
Enabled |
|
LINUX
For Linux there exist two very different
drivers for the old 2MBit/s Wavelan cards and the new IE 802.11 (usually 10
MBit/s) WaveLan cards.
New 10 MBit/s WaveLan Cards
These are the cards without the cable
to the external antenna. The drivers and instructions on how to install them
can be found at http://www.fasta.fh-dortmund.de/users/andy/wvlan/.
Roaming should work with these drivers.
Old 2 MBit/s WaveLan Cards
The WaveLAN drivers in the current
Linux kernels seem to be broken and roaming probably won't work. What
you will have to do is find out the Network ID of your local access point and
set it with the ipwconf tool.
There is a patch for older versions
of the Linux Kernel that allows roaming. Here are the instructions on how to
compile and install a Linux kernel and PCMCIA drivers so that your system will
work properly. First you have to build a version of the kernel with wireless
networking enabled.
Get a version of the Linux kernel. (here's a
link to a 2.0.33
kernel)
- Configure the kernel so that it supports
Radio Interfaces (if you do a "make xconfig", it's the "Radio network interfaces"
option in the "Network device support" sub-menu).
- Go to the source directory and build the
kernel by typing:
make dep; make clean; make zImage
- Install your kernel wherever it is best for
you (for example: cp arch/boot/i386/zImage /zImage.wireless).
- Edit /etc/lilo.conf so that there's
an entry pointing to zImage.wireless.
- Run "lilo".
- Run "make modules"
to compile the loadable modules.
- Run "make modules_install"
to install the modules. Your kernel should be fully installed now.
If you have problems building the kernel have
a look at the
Linux
Kernel Howto.
-
Get the PCMCIA drivers with the patch to allow
roaming (here's a link to a patched
3.0.4)
-
Configure the drivers (make config).
Make sure that you give the proper path to the kernel that you compiled
and installed in steps 1-6, and that you choose to configure your PCMCIA
drivers according to the options in the kernel source tree rather than
in the currently running kernel.
-
Run "make"
to compile the modules.
-
Run "make install"
to install the modules.
-
Reboot. Your kernel and PCMCIA drivers should
be fully configured to use the WaveLAN network now (with the exception
of DHCP -- see the SPINACH pages
below).
If the hardware is set
up successfully...
You now have to get a DHCP address, get authenticated
and get online. These are four simple steps that are explained on the SPINACH
Usage page.
© MosquitoNet in 1998 - For infromation contact gates-net@spinach.stanford.edu