Is it the distro OR wpasupplicant???

[bossdog22]

I'm still a newb to linux... currently I run MEPIS 3.4.3 and am having alot of problems connecting to my wireless AP... my AP is encrypted with WPA, I'm using wpasupplicant (0.3.8-1) and a Netgear WG511 (Atheros chipset) card... the connection worked fine for about 2 days & all of a sudden just stopped working one time... what's weird is when I now start wpasupplicant the card goes thru all the necessary steps, the lights blink and according to all the debugging messages I get from wpasupplicant & wpa_cli the card is associated with my AP... but when I try to load any URL nothing appears in the browser window & I get an error message.

Is the distro causing this problem or wpasupplicant? I know the Debian repositories have been problematic for alot of people lately so I'm uneasy about loading a more recent version of wpasupplicant. I've been thru all the manpages as well as most of the threads here and on mepis.org/mepislovers.org but still haven't come across a solution. Is there another distro that works better for WPA? I like Linux, but if I can't have any wireless access with my laptop I will definitely be less inclined to use it.

[Roxoff]

I have had similar issues with my Fedora Core 5 system, it turned out that NetworkManager was installed and chaging all the config around; it would pull the rug from under the connection to my LAN if it detected anyone else's lan in the vicinity. I took it off.

[bigtomrodney]

What do you get when you run /sbin/ifconfig ? There is a common problem with DNS where the client machine takes ages to find websites and often results in timeouts. Just verify that you have a connection in ifconfig first.