Koble til trådløst nettverk med skjult SSID

[mbst]

Etter å ha slitt litt med å koble til trådløst nettverk med skjult SSID i Windows XP, fant jeg til slutt en løsning på internett.

Legger ut løsningen her, dersom noen skulle være interessert, evt for fremtidig personlig referanse..

 

Unfortunately, the Zero Configuration mode that Windows XP doesn't play very nice with this kind of networking approach right out of the box. By default, the Zero Configuration system works by requesting SSIDs from all systems. If no requests are received, then the OS then reverts to operating in ad-hoc mode until new SSIDs are detected. This is not going to work with our invisible setup, since the network will not respond to an "ANY" SSID request.

 

This led me to two thoughts: 1.) There would be no way to use the invisible network if Zero Configuration was required, 2.) There's something that I haven't tried yet.

 

Tackling the problem in thought #1, I got out my trust LinkSys WPC11 Wireless NIC. The drivers for this card are not Zero Configuration compliant, and as such I had to use the LinkSys client manager. This seemed to work out rather well, and I was able to then connect to my network. Giving some thought to what I would have to do if I were to ever roam to another network, I figured I must have missed something. Besides, my wife would beat me senseless if she didn't have her wireless NIC when she came over.

 

Then I looked into thought #2 some more, and sure enough, there was one thing that I overlooked. Since part of the Windows XP network detection is to switch to running an ad-hoc network, I figured it might not be such a bad idea to turn off ad-hoc networking entirely. So I clicked the advanced button under the Wireless Networks tab, and specified my laptop to connect to infrastructure networks only. If you have automatic connection to non-preferred networks checked, please uncheck that box now (it is unchecked by default).

 

Once that window was closed, my NIC associated with the AP and I was back in business.

 

What is surprising to see, is that despite the connection to my preferred network, there are no networks listed in the available networks tab.

 

I was able to get a hold of another WAP11 and configure it alongside my hidden network. I was able to stay connected to my hidden laptop as long as the other available network was not in my list of preferred networks. If you need to connect to a hidden network in the presence of numerous other access points <cough>rouge AP</cough>, then you must not have the broadcasting network among your preferred networks.

 

-Ian A. Underwood

http://www.agentgreen.org/projects/netstum...invisible.shtml