Whilst the setup is easy, and Windows joined the wireless network easily, I was having problems with my Mac authenticating to the WEP 128 network (highest level of wireless encryption without setting up secondary authentication).

I initally thought there was a problem with the profile in OSX, but after chatting with a colleague at work, it was suggested I might need to enter a dollar symbol ($) before the WEP key, as is necessary in other Mac Wireless devices (such as iphone, ipod touch, apple TV, etc), where the dollar symbol acts as an escape character.

I tried this solution (you can get more info here from Apple’s support article), but that didn’t work at all.

Eventually I used the setup assistance (the easy way of setting things up) and BAM – it worked first go. I suspect the profile was magically wiped and replaced using the setup assistant.

So, despite all my best efforts of re-naming the wireless SSID in the router, factory reseting the modem, deleting my profile and items in my key-chain, it was the lazy way that proved successful.