After a very frustrating day with no wi-fi, I FINALLY FOUND A SOLUTION...
Today, I almost lost it... Trying to get this thing to work all day. Needless to say, it was a very unproductive day.
I read many posts on this forum and have to say that I feel your pain... Or should I say, I felt it, as I too was locked out of my network.
All day, I have been attempting to connect via the "Apple recommended method": Settings > Wi-Fi > tap on my network name on "Choose a Network" > etc > etc... I tried everything, and nothing worked.
Until about 10 minutes ago, when I wondered what would happen if I simply pointed the browser to a web page. Somewhere accessible (given the right circumstances). I used www.google.com (but it could have been www.salesforce.com... or whatever!).
And VOILÀ!!! The authentication page came up (I wasn't excited yet, as I was getting that to freeze every time until now)... *AND IT WORKED!!!*
I hope this works for all of you out there, too. Or at least for most of you. I know how painful it is to just get a brand new toy, after so much expectation, and have it go broken on me (Steve Jobs got called many names today).
So, after making sure that Wi-Fi is turned on in the Settings > Wi-Fi page, *STOP RIGHT THERE...* Because the application immediately finds the network we want to connect to, it's natural for anyone to just tap on that (SSID) name and try to go from there (as Apple's own site tells us to...).
Instead, after ebnabling Wi-Fi, press the home button and open Safari. Go to any public site and, if you are as lucky as I was, after going passed the authentication page, YOU WILL BE IN!
Good luck!
skyandre
iPad, iPhone OS 3.1.3