[TriLUG] Help! Wireless problems

[Matt Matthews]

Apparently my neighbors have a WAP and my laptop is now connecting to it
instead of the one in my back room. I cannot figure out how to tell my
laptop to ignore the other access point. When I try iwconfig to set
things like the access point or frequency/channel, I get messages that
it can't be done. Example:

[root at laptop root]# iwconfig eth1 ap XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Error for wireless request "Set AP Address" (8B14) :
    SET failed on device eth1 ; Operation not supported.

(in the above, the MAC has been obscured)

The laptop is a Dell Latitude C640 with built-in wireless using the
orinoco_cs module. Kernel is 2.4.20-13.9 (Red Hat, obviously) and
wireless-tools is version 25-8.

I have an SMC Barricade WAP. I can set the channel or the SSID or try
encryption, but up until now I've not had a problem. (I use MAC
filtering on my own WAP, so I don't think this guy can get on mine by
accident.)

If anyone can help me fix this I'd be right appreciative. I'd rather not
have to bother the neighbor if possible. Feel free to email me directly,
if this is less of a Linux problem and more of a wireless/networking
problem.

Thanks!
matt