wireless interoperability

[dlapointe at attbi.com (David Lapointe)]

While we're on the subject of wireless, I have a question.    Where I work 
our wireless access points must be specified, i.e. set the ESSID to the 
appropriate value.  

Under Linux ( MDK 2.4.18 , Dell TrueMobile 1150 ) I can't seem to set the 
ESSID,  using either an entry in wireless.opts or using iwconfig.  I can 
discover the ESSID at other access points ( at home with a Linksys WAP1 for 
example).  I switched from the orinoco_cs driver to wvlan_cs. This allows 
iwconfig to push the ESSID value but wireless.opts seems to have no effect. I 
upgraded wireless_tools (22 ->24) with no discernable effect.

Any clues?

David