Does someone know why openSuSE doesn’t support wireless connections on channel 13?
A few weeks ago I was trouble shooting a slow wlan at friends of mine. I figured that the problem was that too many wlans in the surrounding apartments were the same channel. So when I did iwlan scan to check was was available I noticed how crowed it really was. Only 12 and 13 were free. So I changed their router to channel 13 and from that point on SuSE couldn’t see the wlan anymore.
I had to undo the changes with my Blackberry (that did connect to the wlan on channel 13).
First I figured it could be the wireless adapters firmware. But yesterday I had the same situation at some other friends. Different hardware but also openSuSE. Changed the router to 13 and no more signal. One of my friends has a laptop with windows and it didn’t had this problem.
channel 13 is only available in certain countries AFAIK. I know it works here on my setup (U.K.)So, even if the router supports it, the locale on the p.c./laptop may not allow it ( i may be wrong )
> channel 13 is only available in certain countries AFAIK. I know it works
> here on my setup (U.K.)So, even if the router supports it, the locale on
> the p.c./laptop may not allow it ( i may be wrong )
WLAN Channels 12, 13, and 14 Disabled
By default, the WLAN channels 12, 13, and 14 are disabled because it is not
allowed to use these channels everywhere. If you want to use them in your
region, see http://en.opensuse.org/Tracking_down_wireless_problems for more
information.
The answers given are correct; however, I want to comment on the
criteria used to select a channel.
When you choose an available channel, you need to be aware that the
signal is not like television where adjacent channels are completely
separate. If you plot the 802.11b/g signal strength vs channel, you
see a flat topped mesa that is a little more than 5 channels wide,
i.e. the signal occupies the central channel +/- 2. This is the reason
that APs are set up to use channels 1, 6, and 11 as these are the only
choices that do not interfere with each other. Thus channel 12 is not
free of interference from 11 and 10. When setting up a new system, I
scan the neighborhood, rank the signal strengths that I find, and
select from channels 1, 6, or 11 to minimize interference from nearby
strong sources.
If your router has an “auto” channel option, you may want to select that. This will tell the router to scan all available channels and select the one with the least amount of interference and traffic. All wireless devices that connect to the AP will then connect to it using this channel, as that is the channel the AP will be broadcasting on.
Of course if channel 13 is the best, then you will need to enable those channels in openSUSE so your PC can use them, as per the guide above.
Hi
Also re positioning the router and/or aerial orientation can also
improve things. If it’s that bad, you may also wish to investigate
external aerials that provide specific areas of coverage.