my laptop is intel centrino and card is ipw2200. i am using fc5
I think you might need to get the firmware separately. It is available in RPM format at http://bordeaux.freshrpms.net/.
Sure the driver is ipw2200? What does "lspci" output say? What do you see in dmesg output? Is everything correct in /etc/network/interfaces? Have you tried using network-admin or some such to configure your network interfaces?
On a Fedora system it will be /etc/sysconfig/ and not /etc/network/interfaces. Inside the sysconfig directory there shall be a number of sub-directories. Check the configuration files in the relevant location. I will get you the exact name of the file later, since I am not on a Fedora system now. :-(
Use system-config-network to get the GUI configuration tool.
Regards, Debarshi