Well, the cheap and inelegant fix so far is that it's a D-Link router running b standard, so I borrowed my friend's old b standard D-Link PCMCIA plugin wireless card, downloaded the driver, and run off that card...now we coexist on the network just fine...
I"m not completely satisfied with this. My next step is to connect to the router via ethernet cable, and look at the software settings, as was earlier suggested...