For those trying to configure a wireless network, this article about troubleshooting wireless networks may be helpful. Like most things, sometimes it’s as easy as could be, while other times it takes hours of troubleshooting. If it’s the latter, here’s a tip I learned after spending quite a bit of time trying to get one working.

The problem I ran into was that of encryption. I didn’t realize that with encryption not working (the keys didn’t match) you will see a WAP and be able to connect to it, but no data will be transmitted (even pings). I expected it to fail to connect, so when it connected, I didn’t think there was a problem with encryption until it started working when I turned encryption off. Speaking of which, that’s another general tip – simplify the network as much as possible until you get it working, then add in the complexities.