>
> Forgive me replying to my own post, but there is no switch to mixed
> mode on the AP or on the used laptop. Does this mean that:
>
> * My wife's laptop (bought last month) can revert back to 802.11b
No, brand new laptops would come with 802.11g the newer, faster standard
so I would guess this is what your wife's is. It is possible that out of
the box your home access point defaults to just 802.11g.
> * My older laptop (at least 2 years older but bought yesterday) can't
> connect to 802.11b but (presumably) can connect to 802.11g (if that's
> what they had in my office).
No, the corporate WLANs you see will probably be configured to accept
connections using either standard this is "mixed mode". From poking your
laptop into google it looks very much like your wireless card is 802.11b
unless it has been upgraded at some stage.
802.11b is the older wireless protocol that supports 11 Mbit/s
802.11g is the newer wireless protocol that supports 54 Mbit/s
I would be very surprised if it was not possible to set the *access
point* to allow connections using both protocols. At this point it might
be helpful for you to tell us what the model of your access point is,
maybe someone else here has one.
Will Davies
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~wmd04r
