Seems that many people have problems with Kindle wi-fi connection on some routers. As this replay in a thread on amazon’s customer discussion forum suggests, kindle 3 verifies internet connection before considering the Wi-Fi connection successful.

I verified this in 2 ways:

• On a wireless router which kindle can connect, unplug the ethernet cable so it can’t connect to the internet. Then try to connect on kindle again, kindle will report that it can’t connect to the “Internet”.
• On some wireless network which needs login on web page, kindle browser will visit and display a “Kindle Reachability Probe Page” after login. This is another sign of the internet connection verification. (Kindle will not drop the wi-fi connection in case the page can’t be visited.)

I think this verification is NOT necessary and will cause problems in some situation. If I have a local wireless network without internet connection, and I want to start a web server on a computer and transfer some files to kindle without using the USB cable, the internet connection verification make this impossible.

I am not sure whether this relates to the netgear routers’ problems reported by others in the same thread. I bought my kindle through a friend and do not have purchase record in amazon, so I can’t post reply on amazon’s forum. That’s why I post it here and maybe someone will find this.