ongoing wireless issues

[fox]

So okay.  Wireless network in my parents' house.  I've worked out how to get it to quit bouncing me all the time, but I'm still having connectivity issues, and I think the trouble has to do with interference from other networks.  I've got my config set up to automatically connect to The Following Networks In This Order Of Preference, which includes my parents' network, and like the one at the curling club and my friends' place in Florida -- so those other ones are obviously not available here, so it should just connect to the one in the house and be done with it.  But there are these two other networks that keep popping up as available, which I don't mind as long as I can ignore them, but once in a while -- and usually in the evenings -- one or the other of them will force a connection with it and I have to go in and physically remove them from the 'automatically connect' list to reconnect to my own.

Does anyone know a way I can specifically block a network I don't have any interest in connecting to?  (I have obviously unticked the box for 'automatically connect to non-preferred networks'. It hasn't worked.)  Help!

Comments

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

I have zero advice, but do feel I should mention I'll be in Cleveland from Sunday through Wednesday...

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

I will be car-less Sunday and Monday, but poss. we can do something Tuesday or Wednesday. Dude, Cleveland! :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I'll have a car. But I'm leaving Wednesday evening, so can't really do anything that night.

[the-star-fish.livejournal.com]

This happens to me all the time at my house - there are (at least) three or four other networks that reach the living room, and it drives me batshit. The biggest problem is that one of them matches the name of the wifi at work, so if I've been connected there, I have to remove that network from the list or it gloms right on first thing when I get home. Argh.

So no advice, just empathy. *g*

[kmg-365.livejournal.com]

Fox,

I posed your question to one of my co-workers, who is a bit of a wi-fi nut and self-proclaimed tech gadget geek. His response? You're stuck up the river without a paddle.

What he does at home, if I understand his response correctly, is he has auto-detect turned off completely so his laptop will only connect to his secure in-home wireless network. When he travelled, he turned the sniffer on so he could connect to the hotel's wi-fi, setting it as his preferred network. When he came home, he turned the sniffer off so it would once again only connect to his home network.

Here's his entire response:


I have only one network that I connect too, which has 128-bit WEP and a 36-hex-digit key required to join that network. I also have used the administrative screens in my LinkSys WRT54G router to stop broadcasting my networks' SSID, so you have to be pretty determined to WAR-drive down my cul-de-sac to find and access my network. Parking in my drive way with a laptop is a dead give-away ;-)

The only time I have taken my Windows XP Pro SP2 laptop with me on the road (to Oregon last year for my nieces' wedding) to use the hotel's wifi network, my own network was naturally nowhere to be found, so I simply made a temporary adjustment (which I don't recall off hand) to auto-sense other available networks in the hotel. I think I also temporarily changed my preferred network to the hotel's, once it was found. When I returned home from Oregon, I let the laptop sniff for available networks, rejoined my own network and then turned off the auto-sniff for other networks feature to force my computer to only connect to the one network.

I don't think what she wants to do is possible, given the current state of Windows XP and wifi equipment. Maybe Windows Vista will improve upon this, but since it's only in beta, it will be a while before anyone knows for sure.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

Well, that blows. But thanks for asking, and thanks for your co-worker's detailed response. :-) I don't have SP2 on my WinXPPro (I installed it about a year and a half ago, had only more problems, and finally called tech support, and the first advice I got was to uninstall SP2 [g]), but otherwise we're about the same. I shall look for the way to turn off the automatic network detector ... not sure how to do it, but it can't be that hard.

Cheers!

[kmg-365.livejournal.com]

SP2 has been known to do some bad things, but I'd have thought that MS had resolved those by now. You might want to run Windows Update to make sure you're not missing any critical patches.