Two or three AP’s?

[MntnMan8000]

I have two wireless networks in my house. Each has a separate SSID, ihome is on channel 1, and deathzone is on channel 6. When I run NetStumbler it says there are two wireless networks at the bottom of the screen, but it shows info for three. ihome is on channel 1, deathzone is on channel 6, and then a copy of deathzone is also on channel 11. It has the same SSID as my channel 6, but the MAC address is all zeros. It also says this “phantom AP” is encrypted, which neither of my networks are at the moment. The graph of the “phantom AP” is the exact same as my second network.

When I go into Windows to select what AP I want to connect to I only see ihome, and deathzone.

Is this “phantom AP” a reflection of the signal off some metal surface in my house?

Attached is a screen shot, it should answer any remaining questions.

I feel I should provide an explanation for the naming of my SSID as deathzone. The router is named “everest,” after the mountain, and “deathzone” is a zone above 7,500 meters (24,500 feet) at which the human body can not survive with out supplemental oxygen.

Thank you for your help.

[spiderbite]

It shows two different MAC addresses. would you by chance be using an external card in a laptop with an integrated wireless card in it?

Even though it is not being used it might be "seen".

Use the mac addresses to track down the different wireless radios.

Or if you want disable the internal card and see if it goes away.

[MntnMan8000]

I have no laptop with two wireless cards. At the time the only computer with wireless running was my desktop. I have another computer pluged into one of the routers.

[badger11]

The top entry in netstumbler is your client. Do you have your client configured with a wep key? Even with wep enabled you should still be able to see your mac address though. If you have your everest ap set up so that wep is optional you can still associate to the ap. The ap showing up as being seen on channel 6 and 11 makes me wonder if you have a multipath problem. Is there anything that could be causing a multipath problem between your client and everest ap? Netstumbler shows that your client is associated to your everest ap on channel 11.

All the channels that the device has been seen on. The most recent one is listed first. Before the channel number may be a star (*), which means you are associated with the device, or a plus (+) which means that you were associated with it at some point


Have you climbed Mt. Baker? I used to live part way up Mt. Hood.