Setup of Dell branded Aruba wireless access points

These are the basic steps for setting up Dell branded Ariba wireless access points:

1. connect to WLAN named "instant"
2. open non HTTPS page
3. will be redirected to https://instant.dell-pcw.com:4343/#home
4. log in as admin/admin
5. in the top middle, click on edit next to the MAC address and give the WAP a new name
6. in the top left under networks, click on New to create a new SSID
7. Click on system in the upper right hand corner
1. - change name to more descriptive name
2. - Change time zone
3. - Change preferred band to 5 Ghz
8. Clicki on the admin tab and change the admin password
9. Click on RF in the upper right hand corner
10. - in band steering, change value to Force 5 Ghz
11. in upper left hand corner under networks, delete the SSID of instant

DOS commands to view WLAN status

I found this command to be very helpful in giving me details about my WLAN and all the WLANs around me.  It allows you to get the channels of all the WLANs around you and their signal strength relative to you.

netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid

For info just about your current connection, enter:

netsh wlan show interface

dealing with Dell Control Point

On Dell's E series of Latitude laptops, Dell Control Point is installed.  It's designed to manage network connections and power settings.  Unfortunately, it blows.  When setting up an E series laptop yesterday, I found connecting to WLAN and WWAN networks more complex using DCP than traditional means.  And they were the only means of controlling WLAN and WWAN connections.

Here's what I did:

I uninstalled Dell Control Point.  

The laptop had a Verizon 5720 WWAN card in it.  Listed in the downloads for that model of laptop in the communications category was a driver for it - and it included a program for connecting it.

For the Intel WLAN card, I had to go to the downloads section and download a driver for that, too - which of course included the stupid Intel utility, which we know how to disable from here.  But as stupid as it was, the Intel driver was already on the laptop (just not the Intel utility and the Windows utility was telling me that another program was controlling it - so I decided to install the Intel utility to tell it to have Windows control the WLAN card).  And the Dell driver I downloaded was older than the driver already on the laptop.  So I had to go to the Intel site to download the driver - and then I was able to download it and then set it to have Windows manage the WIFI.  

That's how I got rid of Dell Control Point.

VPN set up on a Macintosh

These instructions for setting up a VPN on a Mac work for Tiger and Leopard.  I can't verify for other OSes yet:

Click on the WLAN (wireless LAN) indicator (near the upper right hand corner).

Click on Open Network Preferences

Click on the + near the lower left hand corner of the Network window that appears

For interface, choose VPN

For VPN type, put PPTP

For service name, put **Company Name** VPN

Click Create

For server address, put **FQDN of VPN server**

For account name, put your login name (i.e. john or jsmith depending on your company's policy)

For encryption, leave it at Automatic

Click Authentication and put in your password

Click Connect

And then it should connect.

WLAN driver causes BSOD only on WPA network

I ran into something very strange today. I had a ThinkPad T41 that was getting intermittent blue screens of death. I ran hardware diagnostics, and they all came up with no problems. To make a long story short, I took it home and reformatted it. No more BSODs. Then I brought it back to my client's office, and I got a BSOD every time I booted up the computer - just after I logged in.

It seemed that whenever the wireless LAN card saw a WPA encrypted network (not even connecting to it - just seeing it), it would give this BSOD - about IRQ_less_or_equal (or something like that). I had to disable the WLAN card with the hardware switch (in this case Fn + F5). Then everything worked fine. In the end, I upgraded the driver for the Intel Pro 2100 3B driver (I think that was the model or something close to it). And after that, all was normal. Very strange.