SSID woes

My new laptop has an Intel Centrino processor so wireless is built-in. It was working fine at the office. And, I could connect to several of my neighbors’ networks ; ) but I couldn’t connect to my own. This evening I finally realized I was falling victim to the broadcast SSID “feature” in Microsoft’s Wireless Zero Configuration functionality. It turns out if you aren’t broadcasting your SSID but another network is, XP will always connect to the network broadcasting the SSID no matter what you try. Here’s the FAQ item on D-Link’s site. As soon as I turned SSID broadcasting on, I was a-okay. My WEP encryption key will keep my front yard from turning into a cybercafe.