Does anyone know if Linksys 802.11g routers are not fully backwards compatible with 802.11b? I realize that in theory they should be, but I've been unable to get my Compaq HNW-100 or Dlink DWL-650 (both prism2 cards) to connect to some open access points lately. After using a Windows XP laptop to connect to these two access points, I found them to both be Linksys 54G routers. Strangely, even if I install one of the prism2's on the XP laptop, it can't associate with the routers. What gives?

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Usually Linksys routers follow the 802.11 standards pretty closely and I haven't really seen any complaints about their 11g stuff not being backward compatible with 11b. That said however, I'm not very familiar with the Linksys 54G router and maybe it has an option to turn off 11b compatibility. That wouldn't surprise me since having a single 11b client drags the whole network down to 11b speed.

From your description, the open access points may not be as open as you think. Either that or something is getting borked during configuration. Unfortunately without a bunch of details, it is going to be hard to figure out what is going wrong. What I would do in this situation is go through the configuration steps by hand and see what step is going wrong.

Doh! That was/is the problem. I checked out the manuals on Linksys' website and there is an option to disallow 11b clients, which apparently is the default. I guess I'll be looking for a 11g card then----now just to figure out if I should go with madwifi or prism54.

.....card revision hell awaits.

If you have access to any of the admins, it's really really easy to change from g-mode only to "compatability mode." I don't even see the rationale for not having a compatability mode, personally.