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Greetings,

I've just been playing with my backtrack fitted laptop all around the house, this time observing wireshark capture while changing the data rate on the laptop wifi adapter.

I'm using WPA-PSK, encryption stuff on laptop is managed by wpa_supplicant (still don't quite understand how it works but hey, it just does), and I've noticed that everytime I change the data rate a new 4wHS initiates. What is the purpose of this?

If I change the rate to 54Mbps in places where signal is scarce, all I can see in the capture are EAPOL-KEY messaged thrown back and forth over and over again, to no avail. Iwconfig shows values of about -90dBm and -75dBm for noise & signal strength respectively in places where this occurs. When I change the rate to 6Mbps, a few more EAPOL-KEY can be seen, judging by the number, more than one no-problem_4wHS, but it eventually succesfully associates after a few seconds.

With 54Mbps setting, when I move to the room where my router is, It catches on after a few seconds.

I'll try it later with windows & proper analyzer equipped laptop, hope I'll gather more info and perhaps understand why this is happening..

Till then, if anybody could provide some helpful comments, they'll be greatly appreciated !

Thanks,
mademan