Netgear Universal WiFi Internet Adapter WNCE2001 and open networks

Bought it primarily to connect a very long-in-the-tooth laptop to a secured 802.11N router at home and after achieving that without any issues, I began to wonder if it could serve as a "portable Ethernet jack" at local hotspots with unsecured networks such as public libraries. No dice-it goes through the motions of connecting but it doesn't pass an IP address from the router to the laptop's Ethernet adapter as it's supposed to. Worse, I have to physically reset it after that in order to get back into its web-based configuration program for another try.

I know this thing is really intended for home use with devices such as Blu-ray players and gaming consoles, but there's nothing on the box or in the manual that says it *won't* work with a computer-and as I've pointed out above, it *does* work on an encrypted connection (in fact, I'm using it right now with my much newer Mac to write this). Nor does its documentation indicate it won't or can't connect to an open router. I'm just curious as to whether anyone else has tried this and run into the same problems. Is mine bad or are they all like this?

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Posted 5 years ago by Jonathan L. Parker in Wireless Networking

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