mbolgian

I thought I'd share what I found while playing with this particular adapter. FYI, it uses the RT2571 chipset by RALink. Unfortunately, it has to use the NDIS 5.1 driver in NetStumbler, which is less than ideal.

But the good news is that you CAN make it work, at least going by what I've observed in the last hour or so while playing with different settings in Windows.

I've noticed that while using this adapter, Netstumbler seems to find all the access points around me, but then will "lock on" to the one that I last connected to prior to starting up NetStumbler, and will only "see" that one AP, even though there are at least four other active APs that I know I can pick up. I think this behavior is caused by the driver, not NetStumbler. I've read something before about how the driver will keep a list of APs in its buffer, and the buffer will only get flushed every xx minutes or something like that. This is not what you want for wardriving, obviously. You want the card to be constantly scanning all 11 channels, all the time.

Anyway, here's what I did (and what you can try) to stop that behavior:

If you're using the RALink configuration utility (or some other utility), exit it. I took it out of the Startup group too, but you may want to leave it in there if you don't do much stumbling.

Then, make sure the Wireless Zero Configuration service is turned ON. That's not a mistake. Click Start, Run, and type services.msc. Find the service and make sure it's set to Automatic and then Start it, if you had it turned off.

Next, you want to go to the View Wireless Networks screen. On the left, click on Change the order of preferred networks. Under preferred networks, you'll see a list of the networks that you've connected to before. Click on them one at a time and remove them. Make sure the list is empty, and then click OK.

Wait a few seconds, and Windows will inform you that there are wireless networks available. This just confirms that you've emptied the list.

If you haven't noticed by now, what we're trying to do here is prevent Windows from connecting to any AP, either using the built-in Windows tool or the one from RALink.

So, now that you've got the computer in this state, go ahead and start NetStumbler. Uncheck the icon that will make NetStumbler turn off the Wireless Zero Configuration service. We want to keep it on. Then, click Play and wait a few moments. NetStumbler now will "see" all the access points around you, and will KEEP seeing them, instead of only the one AP that you were connected to. (Hopefully your own!)

Tip: If you want to make absolutely sure you don't connect to anyone else's AP on accident, the easiest way to do that is to disable TCP/IP for your wireless adapter. Without TCP/IP, you can't get an IP address, therefore you won't ever connect to something you're not supposed to.

Hope this helps all the WUSB54G users out there.

streaker69

Absolutely amazing, you figured all this out by yourself, even the part about disabling TCP/IP?

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mbolgian

I'm just curious, why did you feel the need to make that condescending remark? It even states in the forum rules that posts of this nature are not usually tolerated (or at least well-liked.) But, I see that you have a lot of posts under your belt, and you've been here a long time. That no doubt has something to do with others putting up with your behavior.

I merely provided this information so that others who use this adapter might be helped by it. I am by no means new to NetStumbler, or Wi-Fi in general, but I realize that others might be, and some of those new people might even have the same WUSB54G adapter I have. So I thought hey, I'll try and help these people out.

Lastly, if you're going to tell me to grow a thicker skin or something to that effect, don't waste the keystrokes. I'm not going to start a flame war over your childish remark; I'm just genuinely curious why you felt the need to post something that had aboslutely nothing to do with the topic, especially given that the forum rules seem to prohibit those kind of posts.

streaker69

The point is, that you posted blatently obvious information that I believe it's even posted in the FAQ's here.

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brwrdrvr

.....

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mbolgian

This certainly dissuades me from posting information that I think might help others. I understand that newbies are not well-accepted but this kind of behavior is just immature.

Barry

Stick around, you'll see even more immature stuff here. The reason for Streaker's comments, is just what he stated. You basically restated the read me and faq's here on the site. It's not newbies that are made fun of here, just people who don't read, or at least try to look up information themselves.

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mbolgian

Well, I guess I was wrong in assuming that this weird NetStumbler behavior was limited to the WUSB54G adapter. Is this something that a lot of NDIS 5.1 driver-using adapters do? That is, lock on to the last connected AP and only "see" that one?

I will read the FAQs before I post info again.

Beard

I am a relative newbie and haven't had a problem. Your post is, basically, a repeat of information already available here which you would have discovered if you had done some site research before posting. You're apparently an intelligent person who, perhaps, forgot to peruse the Welcome Desk completely and search the site to verify your information was not already available. Your intentions are well placed but you posted too quickly.

<edit>I need to type and think faster.

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Beard

"We hold these truths to be self evident"....
Religous: "Thou shalt not steal."
Amish: "You shall burn in hell for theft of wifi." {courtesy streaker69}
Secular: What's on the books. {courtesy beakmyn}
Redneck; "Thievin' bastard, [blam, blam]"

Solutions for the most common problems or questions of new members are here, here, and here .

mbolgian

This post here: APs Stuck, how can I fix?

is exactly the behavior I was experiencing also.

I did some searching, but I guess not enough reading of the FAQs. i found a bunch of people with the same problem, but I didn't find a solution. So I posted what worked for me.

However, I will concede that everyone who said I should read the FAQs more is right. I will do that in the future.

wiresalot

Don't you mean "solution"??

Beard

What were your search words/phrases? I've found it difficult, sometimes impossible, to come up with a word/phrase that will generate the information I'm looking for. When that happens I just sit back and read until various posts start to hang together or give me new search terms. Most of the folks on this forum are very well qualified and put things together quickly because they work with it all the time, I'm not one of them.

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Beard

"We hold these truths to be self evident"....
Religous: "Thou shalt not steal."
Amish: "You shall burn in hell for theft of wifi." {courtesy streaker69}
Secular: What's on the books. {courtesy beakmyn}
Redneck; "Thievin' bastard, [blam, blam]"

Solutions for the most common problems or questions of new members are here, here, and here .

mbolgian

I used search terms like "stuck", "hang", "freeze", "buffer", etc.

You're right on the money; it's hard to find the right group of words sometimes to come up with exactly the info you need. It would have been nice to search for something like "solution netstumbler stuck" and find some post titled "How to resolve NetStumbler getting stuck on one AP."

This may be asking a bit much, but I would really appreciate it if someone would link me to an example of the post that contained the info that I posted in my original post. This way I could possibly learn what words would be better to search on. Or perhaps I can just do like you did, and manually read through the topics and hope I stumble across some that seem relevant.

brwrdrvr

The quest for knowledge starts with reading the first word.

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Thorn

They're called Frequently Asked Questions. We have them there for a reason.

Thread closed to prevent any more IQ leakage.

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Thorn
"Read Altas Shrugged. Compare it to today. Repeat as necessary"