Hi Nick, now that my simple server is working for WPA... my next step is to make it work for WEP...
I changed:
WiFi.begin(ssid, pass); // for WPA APs
by
uint8_t key_idx = 0;
WiFi.begin(ssid, key_idx, pass); // for WEP APs
this experiment did not work... so I started following the code and I ran into a little confusion since the function:
wlan_connect(WLAN_SEC_WEP, ssid, strlen(ssid), NULL, key, key_idx);
called by WiFi.begin appears to interpret the parameter key_idx as the length of the password? not as the key index...
so I changed key_idx