T43P Atheros/IBM wireless card won't talk to Linksys wrt54g

[fredstev]

Here's the situation (and the solution) for what I ran into at my son's house when I attempted to connect to his wireless router.

I've got a T43p (2668-h8u) with the Atheros wireless card and all current windows and IBM updates applied. Had no luck connecting to son's wireless network with Linksys wrt54g router, which, by the way, is the same router I use at home.

Did the usual things, disabled WPA, attempted pings, did ipconfig /renew and /dns flush, etc., etc. No luck. His Thinkpad T42 with the Intel Centrino wireless card worked fine, so we knew that it was a setting on my T43P.

The fix: (after 2 days of grim determination trying various things)
His wrt54g was in "G" mode only, my Atheros card was in "Auto". Once we put his Linky router in "Mixed" mode, my T43P instantly locked on and joined his network. Evidently Linksys and Atheros define "b", "g", and "mixed" differently. I tried putting my card into "g only" mode and it wouldn't connect with the router when it was set to "g only" mode.

Hope this helps the one or two other people on the planet that might run into this situation.

[dr. zoidberg]

Interesting...
Do you know what firmware version the router had?

[fredstev]

Interesting...
Do you know what firmware version the router had?

It's a Linksys wrt54g version II router with the latest firmware. Son said he thinks it's like ver. 4.07 or thereabouts.

[dr. zoidberg]

Do you have the same firmware as he does?

I think I will try this with my router. I also have an atheros card but I'm running one of the alternate firmwares. Incidentally the latest official firmware version for the wrt54g v2.0 is 4.20.7

[fredstev]

Do you have the same firmware as he does?

I think I will try this with my router. I also have an atheros card but I'm running one of the alternate firmwares. Incidentally the latest official firmware version for the wrt54g v2.0 is 4.20.7

At home, I have the series I wrt54g router (the one with all the leds) and I'm using Hyperwrt instead of Linksys's firmware. I'm also set to "mixed" at home so my wife's T23 can connect in "B" mode.

I've had no problems at othere locations with my T43P connecting, this was the first time I've run into a hiccup.

Edit: I just checked, his router is using the latest firmware, 4.20.7