Things that have annoyed me recently

[andrewducker]

1) The Laser printer near my desk prints duplex for _every_ print out, even if there's only stuff on one side.  So you stand there while it puts out a blank page, pulls it back in and then prints on the other side.  How on earth did that make it through quality control?

2) WiFi routers that come with default WiFi SSID names that are the same for every router.  All Linksys routers, for instance, seem to have a default of "Linksys".  Which means that if I'm walking past one as I wander for the bus in the morning and check my email it asks me if I want to connect to the Linksys router.  Which I would, if it was the Linksys belonging to whichever of my friends had the original router I paired my phone with - but not with every other Linksys on the damned planet.  SSIDs should be (near)unique!!!!  (This maye have been bothering me for a while).

Comments

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

It's not actually Linksys routers - 'linksys' is one of those 'viral' non-existent SSIDs, like 'Free public wifi'. See e.g. http://www.wlanbook.com/free-public-wifi-ssid/

[andrewducker]

Some of them are linksys routers (you can tell - because APs and ad-hoc networks appear differently), but I'm sure some ofthem are also viral ones.

[cdave]

Last time I heard 1) happening, it was because it was the government tracking youuuuuu!!!1!!eleven!.

Seriously, the printer was sucking the paper back in to print the yellow dots on the reverse side.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you can switch it off in your own settings. My stuff never comes off duplex but the guy next to me always complains about his.

[meltie.livejournal.com]

Your phone shouldn't do that - it should perhaps recognise the BSSID internally - the 48-bit unique identifier of the WLAN, and go "Oho, this net is *named* Linksys but its BSSID is different to the last Linksys so I won't try it." In a perfect world anyway ;)

[andrewducker]

I can see why you'd want to do that - but it wouldn't work when connecting to systems made up of multiple access points connected to each one...

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Is the SSID the router name you can change yourself?

[dreema.livejournal.com]

yes, it's the name that appears in the list when your device scans for wireless

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

So Andy should just change his own to be called 'Andy's router' or somesuch, and then problem solved!

[andrewducker]

Mine is called "DuckerFlat" - the problem is that every router I've set up is stored on my phone. So if I pop round to your place I can use your router without having to set it up again. However, some of my friends have WiFi points still with the original names.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Ah that makes sense. I was surprised at the idea that you might not have given *your* router a name.
I guess you just have to do the Visiting Geek thing at friends' places and give their routers names!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Two solutions:

#1: Don't connect to default-named networks. Offer to help people who have default-named routers fix it.

#2: After connecting to the default-named network, tell your phone that the network with that name is Not To Be Trusted and that you don't want to it to autoconnect to that network without explicit permission. If your phone's smart enough to speak 802.11, it's smart enough to understand the difference between a network that it should autoconnect to and one that you want to only connect on-demand to.