Data Frame Errors with Netgear MA401 PCMCIA card - solution

Archived from groups: alt.internet.wireless (More info?)

I could not enable WEP between my laptop, using the netgear ma401
pcmcia card, and a Linksys base station. The latter is the Linksys
Wireless-G ADSL Gateway, the WAG54G. Connection was unreliable, often
with a 'data frame error' message appearing.

I found that the 'advanced settings' on the Netgear card were not
matching the default 'advanced wireless settings' on the Linksys

Making the settings of the linksys station compatible with the NetGear
laptop card seems to have worked - for the moment, anyway. The NetGear
settings were changed via Device Manager (some settings had to be in
multiples of 128 or 256), and the linksys settings via the admin page,
to:
*Authentication algorithm - auto
*Fragmentation threshold - now set to 2304
*RTS threshold - now set to 2304
*Preamble - auto

Any comments welcome. Hope this helps someone.

Michael
Melbourne Australia

When a wireless client connects to a WLAN it goes through a few handshakes.

Client: Probe Request
Ap: Probe Response

Client: Authentication request
Ap: Authentication Response

Client: Association Request
Ap: Association Response

During the AUTH request you can configure either OPEN or SHARED. If you mis-select or mismatch from the client and the AP the AUTH will fail and you will not get on the AP at all.