Beep,

Here's a mail I wrote to a friend, lost in another country without an
Internet connexion, together with a laptop and a WRT54G router,
previously flashed with OpenWRT and equiped with the proper tools (wl),
in a squatted house surrounded by tens of neighbouring airwaves.

Here it is as a quick reminder of what to do if you happen to be in the
same setup, lacking the memory of these few steps. No explanation nor
contextualization here, just pure practical notes. Do what you think you
should, but don't kill your neighbor's bandwidth, and provided you do
care, recycle the unused bits, squat the empties.. and the microwaves!

						Sept. 006, drkvg

----- 8< -----

I understand your despair, and I'm willing to help.

Here's what you should do:

SSH to the WRT, then:

	$ wl scan; wl scanresults

Grab the connexion that has the lowest noise level (in db - something in
between 60 and 70 is excellent, up to 90 is acceptable, over 90 is
usually unusable due to the number of lost packets), *and* that doesn't
have WEP enabled. If WEP appears within the lines, then you need to
crack it open, which, as you know, takes some special operations,
recquires a particular setup, and a little while.

If you find such an open connexion, go for:

	$ wl join $ESSID

..where $ESSID is the actual ESSID, of course.

Check that you have associated with it:

	$ iwconfig eth1

Try it again 'til you get association, and if you get so, query for an
IP address, DNS server and gateway from the neighbor's router using the
DHCP protocol:

	$ udhcp -i eth1

If it works, wow. If you're not sure, check if eth1 has got an IP
address:
	
	$ ifconfig eth1

If not, try to guess the IP range and IP of the router you're trying to
become friends with, by setting yourself IPs and pinging away (you need
a bit of networking knowledge here). For example:
	
	$ ifconfig eth1 192.168.0.99
	$ ping 192.168.0.1

If it works, wow. If not, try 192.168.1.99, pinging 192.168.1.1 (these
are IP ranges reserved for internal networks, the upper two are the most
used, though you can sometimes find some funky ones).

Considering you got ping to the neighbour's router, set it as the
default gateway:

	$ route add default gw $IP_ADDRESS

..where $IP_ADDRESS is the IP of the routeur you successfully pinged.

Next and last step is DNS (Domain Name Resolution, what convers 1.2.3.4
into blah.example.net and makes the net usable). Try to ping a random
server, say, squat.net ;) If it doesn't work, try pinging its IP
address, which is 195.169.149.197. If it works, then you have access to
the Internet, but no proper DNS resolver configured. If it doesn't work
even with the IP address, well, then, you're probably connected to a
local network that has no link to the Internet. Funky, but quite
useless, so try another one, or check back the previous steps ;) 

So, considering you have connexion to the Internet, but no domain name
translation, do:

	$ vim /etc/resolv.conf

..which is the file containing one of more DNS resolvers. If you didn't
get your address through DHCP, but inserted it manually, first try to
put the neighbour's router IP address as a nameserver, since most
routers do DNS caching. If it works, fine. If not, put a publicly
accessible server, like: 62.151.2.8. You file should then look like:
	
	nameserver 62.151.2.8

Now try to ping whatever server, and DN resolves to IP! If it does,
hurrah, you got Internet, and all you got to do now is plug your laptop
onto the network, ensure you have an IP of the same range of *your*
router (not the neighbour's), and that your machine has *your* router's
IP as a default gateway). 

Then, rock on!

Hey, hope it helps. Hugs 'n kisses, good luck and let me know!

In response to:
>
> [...]
> 
> Dear, i need a conection to talk to you and to avoid using windows... I'm
> joining the enemy and I'm feeling really bad.
> Help me, this is an international call for geek solidarity