Gettin wired from wireless

Greetings all,

I've gotten away from working with access points over the past couple of
years and I'm a bit rusty now.  At home I've got a Linksys 802.11b 2.4Ghz
access point that I've had for a couple of years.  It works fine with my
old Windows 98 laptop and Netgear wireless card.  The SSID on the laptop
matches the access point and everything works great.

I'm taking a class at a local university and we were issued laptop's to use
that have built in wireless network cards.  Wireless network access works
great at the university and when plugged in with a cat-5 cable at home but
does nothing at home with the wireless.  The laptop is running XP Pro and
the built-in wireless adapter appears to be a Atheros AR5001X+.  I did a
Google search and got the impression that it can do 802.11a/b/g.

Is 802.11g backwards compatible with 802.11b?  Is it likely just a SSID
issue?  Do you care about SSID's with wi-fi?  Do I just need to learn to
like coffee and hang out at Starbucks instead of trying to work from home?

Dave Parnin
--
Nishikawa Standard Company
Topeka, IN  46571
daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx