setting up wifi / interpreting errors

[Matt Price <moptop99@gmail.com>]

Hifolks,

very excited about my new wireless connection (d-lnnk dwl-650+, on a
thinkpad 600e, running a suspend2-enabled 2.6.13.4 kernel w/ the
acx100 module added in using module-assistant).

THe card works perfectly at home.  yay!

But at work I cannot associate with the network.  Following the
Wondows- and Mac-specificinstructions laid out in various links & pdfs
available at this page:
http://www.utoronto.ca/ic/utordist/wireless/index.html
I have added the following stanza to my /etc/network/interfaces:

iface ut-wifi inet dhcp
       wireless-mode managed
       wireless-essid UTORwin
       wireless-key s:UToronto1home
       wireless-keymode open
       wireless-channel 1

(the last 2 lines were added when things were clearly not working, but
didn't seem to change anthing...)

When I try to connect, I notice two things:

- first, when my card first registers the access point, it refers to
it as 'ESSID ""' -- that is, it sees an empty string where the essid
should be.
- second, and more importantly:  when trying to associate with the AP,
the following error message is generated:

Association FAILED: peer station sent response status code 12:
"Association denied due to reason outside the scope of 802.11b
standard.  Translation: peer station may have MAC filtering enabled or
assoc to wrong AP (BUG), FIX IT"!

ok, that's pretty clear.  In fact the official instructions indicate
that some kind of MAC filtering is carried out by the network, but I
see no indication of how to register my MAC address except by
successfully connecting, and then opening up a browser:

--------------------------------------------
Accessing the Internet

   1. If you have an operational LAN PC card in your laptop, please
remove it before proceeding.
   2. Open your Web browser. If this is your first UTORcwn connection,
you will see the following text:

      Welcome to UTORcwn (Campus Wireless Network)

      Your IP Address needs to be authenticated for this service.
Please authenticate here.

      Thanks

      Click the work "here"

      If an error occurs, go to File | Open and enter
http://login.wireless.utoronto.ca

   3. If this is your first UTORcwn connection, you will see the following text:

      Welcome to UTORcwn

      Your MAC Address '12:34:56:78:90:AB' is not registered

      Your MAC Address needs to be registered

      (Note: The values after MAC Address will be different with your
wireless card.)

      If this is not your first UTORcwn connection or you see a screen
requesting only a password, enter your UTORdial password to connect to
UTORcwn.

   4. Click the Go and Register your address button.
-------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure whether or not this is the real issue.  In any case I'm
stumped.  Anyone have any hints at all?

THanks,

matt