@estut: Is there any chance that some sites are being blocked? The firmware will check a URL and the file from it before it will stay on-line. Up to before 4.8.x, this was
http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt. From 4.8.x it is
http://www.kobo.com/buildinfo.xml.
The alternative is to use the Kobo desktop application under either Windows or a MAC to do the setup. After that, you can look getting WiFi to work.