The "curse of the DrupalCon" continues ...
Which one? The fact that wireless is always an issue, perhaps at least in the North American DrupalCons of late.
At Boston, we had severe issues. Narayan Newton and David Strauss re-wired the conference to use the presenters' connection. That helped a bit, but if I remember correctly there was another issue after that (bandwidth, fake DDoS detection or something).
Now in Washington DC, the internet is still unreliable. Why you ask?
Here is why: The DHCP lease for the IP is very short: less than 5 minutes!
Look at this:
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
DHCPOFFER of 10.34.3.198 from 10.34.0.4
DHCPREQUEST of 10.34.3.198 on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK of 10.34.3.198 from 10.34.0.4
bound to 10.34.3.198 -- renewal in 254 seconds.
Then this:
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
DHCPOFFER of 10.34.3.198 from 10.34.0.4
DHCPREQUEST of 10.34.3.198 on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK of 10.34.3.198 from 10.34.0.4
bound to 10.34.3.198 -- renewal in 256 seconds.
At the hotel, they are more generous with the DHCP IP lease, but not with the signal strength and bandwidth, 32kBps, reminds me of dialup days from eons past ...
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPOFFER of 10.1.10.111 from 10.1.10.2
DHCPREQUEST of 10.1.10.111 on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK of 10.1.10.111 from 10.1.10.2
bound to 10.1.10.111 -- renewal in 12672 seconds.
The other issue is that to get connected, you have to use your browser which is then redirected to the provider's home page. For some reason the site is very slow. Perhaps a Slashdot effect from many hundreds of people hitting it hard all the time ...
So, not much can be done about this misconfiguration ...
Sometimes just do a reconnect, if you are patient enough while the slashdotted gateway serves you again ...
Comments
Larry Garfield (not verified)
Kubuntu wireless fail
Mon, 2009/03/16 - 00:19My Kubuntu laptop had trouble with the wireless all week long. Every time I would connect over wireless to the conference WiFi, it would freeze entirely. Sometimes it would take 2-3 minutes to do so, other times it would freeze while connecting. Major downer. :-( The same laptop on another wireless network worked fine, so it was definitely the conference.
The only DrupalCon I've ever been to where wireless worked for me regularly was Szeged.
Khalid
Strange
Mon, 2009/03/16 - 00:31I use Kubuntu too, 8.04.2 if that matters. The wireless card is Intel, and has been reliable so far.
I was able to get wireless only for a few minutes on the first two days, then more reliably on the third and fourth day.
It never froze on wireless.
It did freeze at the worst moment though: after I connected it to the projector when I was doing my presentation, and it was connected to an Ethernet cable at that point. Froze solid just when the camera guy gave me the cue to start.
Bummer!
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