WAP54G question

1. What is the WAP54G plugged into? What other equipment do you have to work with? The DHCP server has to be somewhere.
2. Do you have the correct cable between the WAP54G and whatever you're plugged into? You can check using the LAN or ethernet light on the WAP54G. If it's on, you have the correct cable. If you have other computers on your LAN and can connect to the WAP54G setup page, then the cable is correct.
3. Can you connect with WEP disabled (no encryption)? Inability of the various manufacturers to convert from ASCII to Hex keys seems to be a problem. If WEP disabled works, try using a Hex key on both the WAP54G and your wireless clients. That will always work.
4. I can't tell from your description if your arrangement worked when you supplied a manually configured IP address, gateway, mask, and DNS. Does it? If it does, then there's some kind of communications problem between wherever your DHCP server is located and the wireless clients. Where is the DHCP server? If you have a router connected, it's in there. If you do not have a router, and are plugging this affair into a DSL or cable modem, then this arragement will not work. The DSL or cable ISP will only supply one IP address. You'll need a router with NAT features to share this single IP address with multiple computers.

Yes, I thought I had mentioned that in my original message; with WEP disabled I can connect to the internet on both laptops. The DHCP server is also a Linksys router (no wireless) and it is connected to a network with aboput 6 other computers (all wired) with the linksys 4 port switch (as part of the router), and an additional 24 port switch. The rest of the network works fine with 2 file servers, and a cable modem. I was under the impression that the router would automatically supply an IP address to the wireless laptops, I am using a Linksys WAP and non-linksys PC cards. I'll try typing in 10 hex codes instead of the paraphrase and see what happens.

If you can connect with WEP disabled, then the wiring and such are working. Methinks using a hex WEP key should solve the connection problem.

The cause is the lack of useable diagnostics or status display in Windoze XP SP2 Wireless Zero Config. What happens is that after typing in the WEP key, you get a message of "Connected" followed by "Waiting for IP address". If the WEP key is not accepted, it will wait for about 45 seconds before belching a "Limited Connectivity" message. There is no indication that the WEP key was not acceptable. WZC has no provision for specifying the type of encryption and will step through all the possible 64/128 bit and ASCII/Hex combinations until it finds something that works. Unfortunately, it only deals with one vendors creative interpretation of ASCII to Hex conversion, and will not try the other. If you think you're having trouble with getting a WEP key accepted, use Hex instead of ASCII. Even better, use WPA which doesn't seem to have the ASCII to Hex conversion issue and more secure.

That turned out to be the problem. The WEP key in the PC Cards were only in HEX. When I typed in the Hex phrase, both computers connected with no problem at all.