Wireless Network Woes

[jabarto]

I got a netbook for school the other day, and tried to get online with it on my WLAN. The abridged version is that I can do this, but only if I remove the encryption on the router. If I leave the encryption on when I try to connect to the network, it gets stuck at the "acquiring network address" stage.

While this isn't a huge problem, I really would prefer that the signal remain encrypted. Does anyone have any idea why the netbook's WLAN card wouldn't be able to pick up the encrypted signal?

I can provide info on both netbook and network if needed, but honestly I have no clue how networks function, so I don't know what's needed.

[Beskar]

You need to set up your router and computer for it to work.

The thing is, there is so many ways this is done, I am unable to assist. Some companies make it so you press a button at the same time on each, to sync then connect, then you can connect at will later (like how you connect an Xbox Controller). On others, you need a special code in order to connect.

Then there might be hardware issues, depending on age and make, where your card is unable to process the signal.

Best bet - Read the Instruction Manual.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Long story short there are a number of pitfalls:

(1) Misleading names of encryption schemes. For instance it is not always clear whether or not a WEP encryption is 64bit or 128bit.
(2) Keys/passphrases can typically be entered in either plain text or in hexadecimal. Text takes the form of a password (all letters of the English alphabet upper or lower case, plus digits); Hexadecimal notation uses only the range 0-f and is a longer sequence.
(3) WPA encryption could be either WPA or WPA-PSK. WPA rotates encryption keys for better security, you are supposed to enter a password with which your PC will log in on the network as it were and fetch encryption keys for the connection; WPA-PSK works more like WEP in that a single static encryption key (entered either in plain text or hexadecimal) is used for establishing the connection and fetching new ones.
(4) WPA2 is sometimes labeled as WPA, WPA2-PSK is sometimes labeled as WPA or WPA-PSK. This is not really important except if your driver/card do not support AES encryption, in which case you might want to consider a refund. <_<
(5) Not all network manager applications may support all encryption schemes correctly. In particular treating WPA-PSK as WPA will fail to work, and some network manager apps seem to do that for some reason.
(6) Multiple applications may be attempting to claim the device/driver. That is a matter of ensuring only one network manager application is running at the same time.

So if you are on Windows and the Wireless LAN card came with its own wireless utility the easy fix is probably to un-install the wireless utility and check & double check what type of encryption you are using. If you are on Linux you may want to ditch network-manager-* in favour of wicd or vice versa.

[jabarto]

It's working now. I hooked the netbook directly to the internet and downloaded a few updates, then unplugged it and successfully connected to the network. I guess the wireless card just needed to be updated.

EDIT: How rude of me, I nearly forgot to thank you both. I appreciate the help.