Hi, John....

On 09/14/09 09:25 am, John Clemente thus wrote :

Gentleman all:

I have been reading the "Is there such a device?" thread since Jim S.'s first post a month ago in hopes of picking up enough information about router architecture to help me successfully connect my TP42 P to routers using encryption when booted to either RC3 or RC5.  I would rather work these thing out my self and not have to ask the dumb question if at all possible.

:-)

While the "such a device" discussion was a mile wide and my understanding of it perhaps an inch deep, if that, I found it interesting and did pick up some hints.   In the hope that the problem is something simple I am missing or that a small change to the DHCP configuration file will solve the problem here it goes.

LOL! Yes, it did meander quite a bit...

I hope you did glean something from it, however.

First, I can connect freely to all open routers in hot spots throughout the country without any problem.  That said, I am often at locations where routers are encrypted and the owners give me the WEP password to permit me to connect.  The routers are usually various models of NETGEAR or Linksys.
Although I think I have used every possible variation offered by the Wireless LAN Monitor v. 3.10 I have never succeeded in getting a WEP connection.  The passwords are usually ten number/letter combinations which I deduce are for 64 bit encryption.  The passwords work in XP when I boot to it and in the i-phone with no problem.

These are - in all likelihood - *not* WEP keys, but rather WPA passphrases.

One variation will get me an IP to the LAN in Ecs but not any traffic over the WAN - internet.  

That's a routing issue, and separate form the encryption problem you describe, above.

If I set up a profile for the location and specify an IP  (select "manually" rather than DHCP on the TCP/IP tab) the router then gives me that IP, but I can not then transfer any data to the internet, although I can get to the router setup page and other locations inside the LAN.

Right. This is because you have not given yourself a default gateway (door), so your system knows not how to get "out of the room," so to speak. If you can transport across the LAN wihtout a problem, then encryption isn't the issue.

If you can't obtain a DHCP address and the rest of your configuration (default gateway, DNS servers, etc.), that's a different issue.

Can anyone shine a light on what I am doing wrong?

Well, let's start with what works:

You can associate with the network. What encryption options have you specified for this to work? (This is more a matter of curiosity than anything else; this isn't really your problem.)

You say that you can connect fine to unencrypted hotspots and get DHCP info to connect. Perhaps we're just not waiting long enough for the data to come down over the encrypted link?

Encryption does include a performance hit. Are you running any type of local firewall (either the built-in one or InJoy)?

I can't see that this is causing any trouble, but want to cover all bases. Can you describe what happens on an encrypted network where you are able to assign a static IP,

when instead you leave the profile set for DHCP? What is the XWLAN indicator doing?