please post comments - 801 failed to connect to AP

[Mikus Grinbergs]

Met with some XO owners at an establishment.  The location had a 
multitude of APs (the most sensitive XO saw more than a dozen) - 
most of them locked.  The establishment itself had an open AP to 
which none of the XOs were able to connect - probably because 
nm-tool showed that AP to be on channel 8.  A "free" AP (from some 
adjacent location) could also be heard (no WEP, no WPA) - nm-tool 
showed it to be on channel 1.

My own XO (running 801) had connected to that "free" AP when I 
visited some days ago -- as far as I could tell, today it 
immediately re-connected when I booted it.  But the XOs of two other 
persons (both running 801) were unable to connect when the icon for 
the "free" AP was clicked on in Neighborhood view.  The icon pulsed 
and pulsed, then eventually gave up.  What I thought was strange was 
that when Frame was called up when the icon in Neighborhood view was 
pulsing, the palette shown in Frame (on the icon there for that 
attempted connection) initially indicated 'channel 1' -- but soon 
said 'channel 11' instead.

----

Two questions, please, to help me try to make sense of one XO able 
to connect to that "free" AP, but the other two XOs not able:

(1) Could the wireless interface have switched from channel 1 to 
channel 11 ??  [If the "free" AP was actually on channel 1, that 
could be a good reason for not being able to connect to it.]

(2) This was an environment where no users wanted to run mesh.  Yet 
the mesh icon in Frame also eventually pulsed (sometimes alongside 
the pulsing icon for the wireless connection attempt).  Was there 
anything a user could do to deactivate mesh, but leave wireless 
available ??  [Even issuing 'ifconfig msh0 down' did not help -- the 
mesh icon in Frame would come back (presumably triggered as the 
system gave up on the wireless connection attempt).]


Thanks,  mikus