AP Scanning

[Tobias Roth]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 06:41:57PM +0400, Anton Nikiforov wrote:
> I'm traveling between a few locations with differn APs configuration and 
> differen options to access internet (dhcp, proxys etc).
> In addition some offices have no WiFi APs installed, so i use ethernet 
> cable or ppp over GPRS connection there.
> And i wold like my noteook to swith profiles automaticaly (i want to 
> test radio environment in case no ethernet cable is attached and i know 
> how to do it). And if no ethernet nor radio available - it should 
> connect over ppp (if usb cable is attached).

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-mobile/2003-November/002284.html

i didn't consider ppp when i made this, maybe i will some day. but as
you want to use ppp as a 'last resort', this will definitely work without
problems with my patch.

> I understand that there is a simple way to test the radio invironment by 
> setting up ssid and other parameters and check if the interface become 
> assotiated, but i do not like this idea.
> Maybe there is something that i coud use as a key to start interfase in 
> one of the predefined configurations (like before setting a ssid to read 
> AP's serial or whatever unique location ID)? Maybe even scan an air for 
> APs that i do not know? :)

you can use the MAC address for that if hat is what you meant. not really
secure, but it might do.

> And additional questions - is how to change Mozilla/gaim configuration 
> "on the fly" to correspnd to each location. (but this question is not 
> FreeBSD related, so it could be considered as OFFTOPIC, but maye someone 
> solved already this problem?)

you can do this very easily with my patch plus a small shell script.
basically, everything that is not configured from within /etc needs to
be configured through a custom shell script. you can have mine, but it is
not very sophisticated.

cheers, t.