This may be a little off the topic of the original post but it does somewhat relate to my problem.

I've recently purchased a Dell Inspiron 600m with an Intel 2200BG wireless card installed. Windows Professional is the OS.

Based upon the discussions I've read here I purchased a LinkSys WRT54GS V4 router to use for the laptop.

Initially I had the encryption set to WAP2 TKIP+AES and set up the laptop to use that connection. It found and connected to the router but I could not access the internet from the laptop. When opening IE it would just lock up.

I connected directly using Ethernet to let Windows Update do what it needed to do so I am up to date with the patches. I did update the wireless card driver for the laptop and the firmware is up to date for the router as well.

As a last resort (to make sure the router wasn’t broken) I set the security to WEP. Setting it with the 128 key option the laptop was able to connect and access the internet without any issues.

I understand WEP is just above the security hierarchy chain as no security at all but it’s all I’ve been able to get working at the moment.

I do have MAC filtering on and only the MAC address for the laptop is listed as being able to access the router. A question I have is by doing the filtering, did I gain anything on the security level given that I am currently using WEP?

Another question is has anyone else been able to resolve this issue between the LinkSys and the wireless card? I’ve been told to get NetGear but don’t know how the quality of it is in comparison to LinkSys.

I’ve seen and tried a few of the options I found but they didn’t work. I wanted to check here before calling Dell because of the various experience people have here and they may know something that Dell wouldn’t recommend.

Thank you for your time