argh -- can't get wireless in someone else's house

[R. G. Newbury]

>>> wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"xxxxxxx"
>>>           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
>>>           Tx-Power=27 dBm
>>>           Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B
>>>           Encryption key:3431-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx
>>>           Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
>>>           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
>>>           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
>> Presuming the key is correct, you might try an additional "iwconfig
>> wlan0 essid xxxxxxx" (where xxxxxxx is changed appropriatedly) to
>> trigger a new association attempt.  Sometimes multiple tries are
>> necessary, YMMV.

> i thought it looked curious as well, but it's apparently just the
> "ASCII" rep of the actual 10-digit numeric WEP key:
> 
>   '34' = 4
>   '31' = 1
> 
> which are the first 2 digits of the WEP key.  is iwconfig *supposed*
> to print the WEP key that way?
> 
> more later.
> 
> rday
> 
> p.s.  when you run system-config-network, the dialog screen to enter
> the WEP key states to use a prefix of "0x" to designate hex, but i
> tried it both ways and the output from iwconfig is the same either
> way.  go figure.
Further to this: Seems like a mismatch. On my laptop and router, the 
iwconfig key, the system-config-network listing and the router setting 
are all in HEX.

iwconfig reports the first portion as: 79E0-744C...

Iwconfig splits the key into 6 groups of 4 characters plus 2 for 26 total.
The router, IIRC, requires that you type in a passphrase, which it 
hashes. System-network-config requires a leading '0x' to know that the 
setting is hex, while the iwconfig setting does not seem to care what is 
entered, so long as it is a *continuous* stream of characters of the 
correct length (10 or 26). The '0x' in the network settings page is not 
part of that number.
And the essid setting has to be last.
Interesting too, that I start NetworkManager first, and bring up the 
interface last, while you do the opposite. Mine works. Try it.

Geoff