Is Digi Connect Wi-ME channel auto-scan passive or active?

Question

When the channel setting of Digi Connect Wi-ME is set to "Auto-Scan", does the device silently listen the available channels for beacons? Or send probe requests (active scanning)?

If the scanning method is passive, it should be safe to set the Wi-ME country to "Japan" if it is configured to join networks only. Wi-ME is configured for Intrastructure only (no IBSS allowed, so it should not start a network without any access point).

Or is there any other way to to have one fixed Wi-ME configuration that will associate with any legal 802.11b AP anywhere in the world?

(If I select USA as the country, Wi-ME does not detect networks on channels 12...14, so this "safe choice" has problems e.g. EU and Japan.)

Answer 1

the wime does both. it will listen and then do a probe request based on the ssid, channel, and encryption that it's looking for.

It sounds like you want to 'lock' the wime settings down. why not just pick an ssid, channel, and encryption method? Make sure you pick a channel that's used around the world; i.e. not 14 for example.

most wifi channels are used worldwide, channels 3-10 I believe.

Comments

Ok. If there are active probes, then the country setting must be set to a safe value, e.g. US when the country is not known that the time of configuration.

I want 'lock' all settings possible, giving the end-user only a minimal set of configuration possibilities: SSID and security settings. This is because the user interface of the device where Wi-ME is embedded is very limited.

The problem is that if e.g. European end-user's existing network is on channel 13, and devices we ship are set to "US", they will not find the user's network unless the end-user is also given an option to change the country setting. (We cannot set it for him because we do not know what will be the final destination country at the time of configuring.)

Answer 2

I see your concern. The WiME by default has US channels. You'd need to find a way to prevent it from transmitting on channels 12 and 13.

there is the ability to create a 2nd user in the wime. In it I believe you can give them the ability to change wifi settings. I'm not positive that it will solve your problem however. You can find these settings in the wime web interface: homepage -> configuration -> network -> wireless LAN settings.