How to prevent one wireless network from "breaking" the connection to another wireless network?

[sandmanwake]

My school has its own wireless network and lots of people are running XP on their laptops with their own wireless card. Problem is there's a company in the same town that has its own wireless network also. Apparently when these students' laptops pick up the signal from the other company's wireless network, XP tries to create a connection to this second network. When this happens, wireless stops working for them altogether. Is there a way to prevent XP from trying to connect to this other network after it's already been connected to the school's or some way where even if it detects this second wireless network, the laptops would be using the school's wireless instead without crapping out?

 

[JackMDS]

Whether it can be done efficiently or not depends on the Access Points parameters settings (like SSID Channels etc.) You should talk to the school official;s they might talk the other company and coordinate the settings of their transmissions.

 

[ktwebb]

Channel (frequency) is irrelevant as your client card will scan the range upon initialization. Manually setting your Security Set ID (SSID) on the other hand, should limit the AP that you will associate to. Sounds like the rogue wireless pickups are using AP's that are broadcasting their SSID, a ridiculous measure for any wireless infrastructure. Find out what SSID your school is using and force it in the Wireless NIC's properties. I would assume your school has broadcast SSID turned off and changed from the default SSID but if not, then strongly suggest it to them. They really should be using some level of WEP as well though they may have decided the bandwidth hit isn't justified. Weak argument IMO, whatever there justification is. If the range of the AP infrastucture is not confined then WEP is a no brainer.

 

[sandmanwake]

The school has a SSID that has to be manually set as well as a WEP key that has to be manually set.