I thought I would start off this new site with something remotely helpful. I hope. I received my new Kindle3 wifi on Sunday. Its a great device and I absolutely love it, but I had a terrible time connecting it to my wireless network. I live in one of those massive apartment complexes where EVERYONE has a wireless router. It becomes quite a hassle to secure yours when you know someone eventually is going to try to leech off of it.
Being a geek, I went above and beyond (by far) what was necessary for security. I set up a WPA2 passphrase, then set it to only allow internet access to those with a pre-accepted MAC address. So, anyone who breaks my password can’t do anything but maybe see my file shares. They cannot access the internet through my router without one of the MAC addresses on the list.
When you set up a new PC on the network all you do is click on the network, type in the passphrase and wait for me to add your MAC address when it pops up in my router menu. That works great and I can’t complain. However, the Kindle will not wait that long. It will deny you access instead of waiting in the network “purgatory”.
The solution? You have to go into your router configuration and manually enter the MAC address of the Kindle into the accepted list before connecting to the network. Usually you wait until someone connects and then click to add their MAC. Not in this case. You must read it out of the setup of the Kindle (Settings Menu) and type it in manually. Once it is cleared as an accepted device (trusted) it will easily connect and have no further problems.
Hopefully, this has helped, or may someday help, you. It can be quite confusing because the error on the device reads “Can not connect” or something to the effect of password might be incorrect, but I want to assure you, this device DOES connect to WPA2 on a linksys router and will work with MAC filtering as long as you add it to the trusted device list first.
P.S. This same thing will happen on Linux/Unix devices connecting to a MAC filtered network (Android phones!). So, beware.
I had to go a step further to get my Kindle 3 to connect. In fact, after turning on MAC filtering, my Kindle wouldn’t connect anymore even with manually entering the MAC address and turning filtering back off. So, I set aside a specific IP on the router for my Kindle and entered it manually. Now, everything works even with MAC filtering back on.
So, your DHCP server wouldn’t even recognize the kindle as a valid device? Are you using a Linksys Router or something else? That’s extreme, I’ll make sure this comment stays up for anyone else that might run into that issue.
Using AT&T Uverse with 2wire router.
Hello. I’m having the same trouble as Kaleb with a netgear router. I haven’t tried setting specific IP address yet……
I would try what Kaleb has advised. Perhaps that will remedy the situation. It is a shame all of this has to be do difficult, but if you leave in a large apartment building, MAC filtering is the only way to go.