The PhoneBoy Blog


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Nokia N93 and Access Points on Odd Channels

I was trying to get my Nokia N93 onto our lab Access Point today, but for some reason WPA was failing. I know I had entered the right WPA etc, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I ended up logging onto the access point to see if there was some setting I could tweak, but there wasn’t much there to set up. I did, however, discover that the access point was on Channel 2, which seemed odd.

There are three non-overlapping channels with 802.11b/g: 1, 6, and 11. Other channels will work, but those are the channels you should use if you want to minimize interference. I discovered our access point was on Channel 2 instead of either 1, 6, 11. After using iStumbler to see what access points were around, I  chose to put it on Channel 1. Once I did that, the Nokia N93 started connecting just fine.

As an aside, iStumbler picked up nearly 40 different WiFi access points. Granted, many of them had the same SSID, thus part of the same mesh network. However, it’s quite a shock to see so many access points in such a small area.


#Cybersecurity Evangelist, Podcaster, #noagenda Producer, Frequenter of shiny metal tubes, Expressor of personal opinions, and of course, a coffee achiever.