I am trying to configure my system (laptop, linux) to connect to a wireless point here at my school. I'm almost certain I've got my configuration correction, but I'd like a sanity check.

The wireless point is an 802.1x using EAP-MSCHAPv2. This is not a problem - I can associate with the AP and authentication succeeds. It's DHCP that's the issue. My client (dhcpcd) successfully goes through all the steps: discover, offer, request, ack - it reports all and I can capture all of these steps in a Wireshark capture. It fails on setting up the system at times, with the error of "add_route: No such process"

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, depending where I am on the campus. I feel that I'm getting a bogus DHCP response from the router. Now, routing tables are not my strong point, so feel free to correct me. When it fails, I generally see something like:

Subnet mask = 255.255.253.0
IP = some IP address
gateway = some other IP address

Now, that subnet mask just looks weird - is it valid? Further, if I do:
Code:
my IP (binary AND) subnet_mask;
gateway's IP (binary AND) subnet_mask;
I end up with two different answers. To me, this says that the gateway and me are on different networks. My understanding is that the gateway is my sort of "portal" to other networks. If something is on another network, I need to go through the gateway. If the gateway is on another network... well, that seems very chicken-and-egg to me.

I found somewhere else that said in this case where the IP & gateway differ like that, that the DHCP response should contain additional info for a route to the gateway. I'm almost certain through my wireshark captures that the DHCP server is not sending anything extra.