Choosing between wireless access points on the road

[qwkbrnfox]

Hi all,

I have a properly working wireless system for my laptop that I usually use at home. Today, I took it out, and happened to check for an access point in the coffee shop I was in. Lo and behold, I got a connection. For kicks, I ran kismet, and there was two ap's. After a bit of fooling around (mostly involving unplugging and re-plugging the card), I found that one seemed to be providing dhcp, while the other wasn't. So, I wanted to use the dhcp one. It seemed that the one I connected to was random. So, to the question:

Short of randomly plugging in the card or running kismet (which requires unplugging after using), is there a 'tidy' way of determining the available ap's, then selecting one? iwconfig seems to be able to select an ap, but I don't know an easy way to list them, without going into kismet.

Ideally, I envision a package that lists the ap's (nice gui, of course), allows you to select, and perhaps automatically setting WEP passwords.

Any ideas?

BTW, I have an Orinoco gold card.

Thanks!

[subliminal_boy]

Kwifimanager might do what you want - name sounds promising anyhow. I've just emerged, and will play some more after I get home to switch cards.

[subliminal_boy]

well, it appears that kwifimanager will do some of what you desire. It functions very much like the Orinoco client manager (in windows), allowing definitions of four wireless profiles. While it does appear to find and connect automatically, it does allow you to run a customized script as part of the profile (so you could presumably call dhcp for address rental).

Clearly having a profile defined with mostly unsecured parameters would come in handy in a coffee shop type situation.

- sub.