I have a Broadcom wireless 54g MaxPerformance adapter and I'm using Broadcom's software to run it. In my site monitor it shows an AP (NetGear) that I sometimes connect to. It has the best signal strength of all AP's around, it has the most bandwidth, and it's not secured by WEP or WPA.

It shows me that the network is running (along with several others), but it won't let me connect to it. When I go to "View wireless networks" to try to connect, it doesn't show up. I know it's there and waiting for me to download torrents on it, but I simply can't connect to it. Meanwhile, I'm having to connect to a Linksys AP which has shitty signal strength; great for email, bad for torrents. Any advice?

Edit: Also, there's several others that are under my site monitor that show up but aren't available under "View wireless networks", although I'm almost positive that it's because the signal strength is so minimal it's pointless to try to connect.

Could be that you can't connect because the your mac doesn't match anyone that is set in a list on the router. Sometimes you don't need a WEP or WPA to protect your router. Just a simple 'safe MAC list' will keep people from connecting to it.

I feared something like this was the problem because one night everytime I got on the AP the person (whoever) owns it would shut it off. We did this little ring around the rosie until 3 a.m.

But if that were the case, wouldn't it still show up under my wireless networks, only show me an error message after I tried to connect?

Oh, and thanks for the reply

Edit: Also this network comes into view under my wireless networks and I can connect to it but only twice a day tops, for maybe 10 minutes each time. When I first started leeching, this network was on all the time and I downloaded 6 movies in about a day. I was sooo happy.... Now I think I'm just fucked and I guess I'll just have to pay for my internet just like everyone else (Or, park in the lot of the coffee shop down the street).