I am running Damn Small Linux 2.3 and have been having trouble getting my Gigafast WF721-AEX wireless card to connect to my home network. I followed the tutorial on this page to get the card semi-working. I am basically on the second to last step of the tutorial where it says that all I need to do now is get an ip through DHCP. I tried using the command given and I didn't have that package installed. Could not find it to install. I also clicked on DSL Panel and tried using the wlanconfig and Netcardconfig. Every time, it hangs at the point where I broadcast DHCP. I think I'm going to have to configure it manually which pretty much leads me to my questions. Here are the blanks I'm filling in and what I've tried putting in them:

IP Address: I tried to give it 192.168.1.68 which is what the ip is whenever this laptop is connected via ethernet (will this cause problems?)

Network Mask: 255.255.255.0 (I have no idea what this means but my other computer has this number as well)

Broadcast Address: This one really have me stumped. Should this point to the router or something else?

Default Gateway: 192.168.1.254 The IP of my router

Nameserver: 192.168.1.254

I hope that I'm just making a simple mistake. Can anyone see it?

Your IP settings look good. For internet access you may need a couple of nameserver addresses of your isp as well.

Type in /sbin/ifconfig. The broadcast address should be filled in for you based on your IP and netmask address (The last octet is FF). So it will be 192.168.1.255. However, I've never had to manually configure it.

Make sure you have wireless-tools installed. The enter "/usr/sbin/iwconfig" and "/usr/sbin/iwlist <your wireless device> scan.

For the last command use your wireless device name. It might be wlan0, or eth1 or ath0 depending on what you have for wireless. If the last command lists some Access Points, then the wireless device is working and you can check out if you have wpa encryption configured correctly.

That is the order you need to get it working. 1) device 2) wpa_encryption 3) network
The device needs to work to do anything. Wpa_encryption needs to work to connect to your wireless router. You need to connect to your wireless router to get an IP address if you use DHCP.

Thanks for the advice, jschiwal. Now that I'm back from vacation, I've been messing with this laptop again. It seems I'm having problems with the WEP key (my network doesn't use WPA...yet) and DHCP part of this. If I turn off encryption on my router, the amber light comes on like it used to when it worked long ago, but I still can't get on the network. Using the DSL Netcardconfig, I have tried obtaining an ip via DHCP broadcast, but it always comes up empty. I've also tried specifying an IP but the router seems to ignore it.

About using the WEP encryption. When I turn encryption back on, my little amber "happy light" goes out. I've tried entering the WEP key using this command: with no luck. Am I doing that part wrong?

I am trying out a different wireless card borrowed from a friend. It is a Dell Truemobile 1150. It kinda works. I can run the Prism2 configuration utility thing from the DSL Control Panel and get it to connect to the network but ONLY if it is unsecured. When I add a WEP key to the network, the card can no longer connect. Anybody have any ideas?