D-Link Hardware - weird problem

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I just got a D-Link DI-514 Router and DWL-122 USB/WLAN. The router is hard-connected to my desktop and everything is working great there.

My USB/WLAN is installed and working ok on my notebook, and I can see my WLAN's signal when I do a 'site survey'... It is the correct signal, because I've changed the name a couple of times and the notebook always shows the right one.

However, I can't get the notebook to connect. It pretty much just ignores me. No error messages or anything. I've even disabled WEP on both sides, and have no firewalls or other protection going..

Both machines are on W98SE..

Any ideas??

[cszeto]

http://forums.practicallynetworked.com/showthread.php?threadid=3237

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1) Desktop Machine (W98SE)
2) Cable Modem
3) D-Link DI-514 (LAN/WLAN Hub & Router)
4) Notebook machine (W98SE with D-Link DWL-122 USB/WLAN Adapter)


1, 2, and 3 are connected together with Cat 5. No problems at all. I want #4 to connect to the network via the WLAN adapter.

Problem:
#4 can 'see' the WLAN out there when I do a "Site Survey". I get 100% signal strength, and no error messages, but no connection to the network.

I have tried power cycling all components, limiting the hub/router to 2MB/s, different levels of WEP encryption, and removing encryption altogether. None of these have had any effect.

[cszeto]

Have you verified that DHCP is enabled on the notebook machine? What does the WINIPCFG output look like for the notebook?

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Well.. I'm not sure why, but I tried removing and reinstalling the USB adapter and now it works... As far as I know, I didn't do anything different on this re-install than on a previous one..

Anyway, it's working fine now...

On to other questions. I plan on doing some of my own research on this, but would like input from here...

1) Should I keep ZoneAlarm running? My desktop is a pretty hefty machine, I'll keep it there, but my notebook is fairly old and having ZA running seems to slow it down a bit. Since my router has a built-in firewall, I'm thinking that I'll just run my notebook w/o ZA. Is the router's firewall sufficient, or should I run ZA too?

2) In order to keep my WLAN secure, do I need to take any steps beyond the built-in 128 (or 64) bit encryption?

Thanks!

[cszeto]

ZoneAlarm is faulty, there are other instances of it as such across the forum. As for most situations:

- The NAT router is a "natural firewall" that will suffice against a majority, if not all, network protocol based attacks

- WEP will keep out a good majority of folks, but the ones with actual intent - those folks are next to impossible, if they are any good and you get their attention