Why is connecting different at home then it is at a friends?

[Newstudent]

I have a wireless router at home. When I boot up my laptop running Slackware Linux, it automatically assignes the IP address, netmask, SSID, channel, and Frequency. I can connect to it with no problem.

When I go to my friends house and we try to connect to his wireless router (Linksys) we can see it using Kismet and the ESSID, channel, Frequency, and IP his Access Point is using. But it does not automatically assign this info to the card. Even when we exit out of monitor mode and restart the wireless card.

I even tried manually entering in the ESSID and try a "#dhcpcd eth0" but with no luck.
Sometimes I notice the BSSID number for the AP is automatically put in but nothing else.

His AP shows up as RED in Kismet but mine shows up as Yellow (even though they are set the same way)

I have also tried setting a static IP address
#ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.5 netmask 255.255.255.0

but I still can not ping his AP (192.168.1.1)

Also do I need to set a route to connect?
(exp: route add default gw 192.168.1.1)

Why is this different then connecting to my wireless access point? Both settings on the APs are the same. I can connect to mine but we cant connect to his.

Please help!!

Thanks

[kkubasik]

um securty? encryption? did you check for that, along with any filters (ip, mac) that he might be using. Also make sure you are using the same wireless standard 802.11b/g or 802.11a. Post the frequency you are using. Also you might need to have a dhcp running on his network. If you want, download airsnort and use that on his connection. if hes using wep, then it will give you the key to use.