Wifi

[boofhead]

Maddening problem. My wireless router packed it in and I bought a new one from Linksys. It would not allow three of my family's computers (I work from home and have three, they have three also) to log on to the network. I took that back and bought a Belkin, which allows those computers that work to operate faster, but the same three (that worked fine before and the laptops continue to work when out of the house) either will not log onto the network, or when logged on will not allow the browser to receive a signal. No packets are returned. All computers use Windows XP, they all have different wireless adapters, some built in and some plug in. The range is around 25 metres but even if the laptop is in the same room as the router it does not help.
I have tried all variations in security, to no avail. One of the laptops belongs to my wife and of course it is all my fault that she can no longer get onto the internet. I have wasted days on this, and if anyone has a suggestion please let me have it...

[Keef]

Check that the WEP or WPA (or whatever) security set in the router is the same as the setting in the WiFi in the laptops.

If the router is WPA and the laptops don't have WPA, that'll stop you.

The laptops should have a facility to scan for wireless networks in range, and should see your new one. If you tell the laptop to connect to that, it will ask you for the WEP etc code.

I assume you've left the connections to be handled by DHCP? If the old router had fixed addresses for each machine, that could cause the new router to be picky.

I had several Belkin routers in the past, and they all caused me grief and were abandoned. The last was a couple of years ago, so they may have fixed it now. Netgear are generally well liked, as are Linksys.

[boofhead]

I would have thought Linksys to be the best, and I had one work well for several years until a power failure caused to to stop working. Hence the attempt to find a replacement.
I managed to get the wife's laptop to work by telling IE to work Offline. Exactly the opposite of what it should be. And so far the other computers have all managed to find the network and go online, so maybe my problems are solved. Maybe. Meanwhile the snow thrower has jammed up and will not run with the auger engaged. Is that software?

[late developer]

Is the snow thrower connected to your home network?:8


First things first, 'cos this is gonna be long ... have you tried powering down everything on the network completely switched off at the wall? I mean internet cable modem if you have one, the router itself which if ADSL will have the modem built in, and all pcs and laptops. Standby/hibernate isn't good enough. Complete power down. Everything. Then switch it all back on again and try again. There is a chance it might work, especially if you have a cable modem which has not been powered down since you started the router swap-around business, or if the laptop hasn't been switched off completely perhaps.

Anyway, if that doesn't work, you might like to read on...


LinkSys has a built in firewall that in my experience can be a bit temperimental when it comes to allowing access to the internet, and maybe the same could be said of your Belkin too.

So I don't know if your Belkin might benefit from some tweaking:)
...but you'll need to read some of this first I am afraid...

NB I am not a fully fledged IT bod, but I have setup three different LinkSys routers and a Netgear for home networks, including three on cable and one on ADSL so I can tell you what I picked up when mine didn't work straightaway, if you like....

I apologise if you already know some of this stuff, but got to start somewhere:

Keef said automatic DHCP is the way to go. I agree. That's usually what you get as default from these routers. Do you know what it does?

Let me tell you what I think it does: In all four boxes I setup, I am using the box as an automatic DHCP router (as well as the box's other function as the local network "switch" or "hub"). The switch just sorts out where packets are to and from on the local network. Never mind the Internet just yet.

The automatic DHCP router allocates a local network (LAN) local IP address chronologically to each pc or laptop or Wii, wireless snowthrower, office vending machine (I kid you not) or whatever else you want to connect to the LAN, on a first come first served basis as each new thing starts up and connects.

So what IP addresses will they be then??

You probably already know one typical local IP address on your network. It will be something like 192.168.0.1 (Netgear router usual default) or 192.168.1.1 (LinkSys router usual default). To adjust the settings in your router you will know that the router is connected to a pc, perhaps wireless or perhaps hardwired to the nearest pc using a standard Cat 5 network patch cable, you need to hit Start/Run and type http://192.168.0.1 (or whatever the book says is your routers default local IP address and then hit OK to get to the router login screen.

So that's one local IP for the router. What about the pc's?

Well the router dishes those out as 192.168.X.x according to how you set it up. The LinkSys default is usually that the first pc that connects whether by patch cable or wireless gets 192.168.1.100. The next will get 192.168.1.101, then .102 and so on. On Netgear, the first pc usually defaults to 192.168.0.2, then 0.3, etc.


Anyway, if you can log in to the router Admin screen (can you?) then you can hunt for a screen or button headed DHCP Client Table. If you can find such a thing then open it up and see if any 192.168.X.x 'clients' are listed.
If they are, then that's a good sign. It means the router can 'see' the client pc's so in that small regard at least, the network (via the router/switch box) is working.

These local IP addresses starting 192.168.X.x or whatever are of course not unique IPs like the ones out there on the WWW which are lurking behind domain names. Which is all just as well, because if all these 192.168 addresses WERE exposed directly to the internet, several tens of million computers would all look the same and the WWW would work about as well as your snow-thrower:E

So then, these 192.168 beauties are just for you and yours on your home network. LAN IPs are allocated by the router first to itself (that's basically a fixed address for the router itself) and then, as we have said, one each to the local pc's or laptops as they fire up and request a connection. Each one will be a new number, consecutive to the last, in the order you switch them on.

It is just network operators' convention to use the range 192.168.X.x for this purpose. Actually any XXX.XXX.XXX.xxx range would do, but lets stick to basics.


OK then, what exactly are these IP address numbers for? Easy. They're just unique IDs WITHIN the local network that allow each of the pc's and the router to identify and send/receive packets to/from each other using Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) without packets getting misdirected.


There are actually some other unique IDs associated with your home network called MAC numbers. Your wireless router might even have three different MAC numbers for different purposes, but we'll leave those alone for the moment. You might never need to know about them.


Now then, as Keef warns, if you are going to use automatic DHCP IP addressing then you need to know if all your PCs/laptops are actually configured to request an automatic DHCP allocated IP from the router?? Or are they set up to be headstrong and to demand their own fixed address every time:)

How can you check?

Well this is where it gets a bit fiddly.

First you can use a little network operators trick to see what IP your pc or laptop actually thinks it is at the moment...Click Start/Run and type cmd then hit OK.

A black 'DOS' type window will open.

Never mind what it says at the command prompt, just type ipconfig and hit Return.

The first line of data usually contains your pc's LAN IP.

Is it a 192.168.X.x address? That's a start. If it is 169.254.X.x then that's a Windows default IP address and shows your computer is not yet setup to be on any network yet and I suggest you might as well risk using the Internet Connection Wizard on any pc like that to set it up from scratch.

If the LAN adapter is already a 192.168.X.x address per ipconfig, then look two or three lines further down and see what is noted under Default Gateway. If the number there matches your router i.e. 192.168.1.1 for LinkSys then things are not so bad!

There is still the chance that the 192.168.X.x address you have found is not an automatic DHCP allocated address but is a manually set FIXED IP address on this pc/laptop like Keef warned. How can you check that?


Well, in XP you can usually click on Start/Connect To/Show all connections to see a window of the connection devices on your pc like a built in dial up modem, Local Area Connection (wireless) adapter, Local Area Connection Bluetooth adapter, Local Area Connection Firewire (1394) adapter and such.

I don't know if you are using a mix of wired and wireless on your router which is why I put (wireless) in brackets. Most routers at the moment have four wired ports as well as the wireless connectivity aerial(s). Many people have the router next to their main pc so a wire from the traditional network card in the pc to one of the router ports is perhaps convenient. It doesn't matter really. Wired used to be faster, but not necessarily so anymore. A PC with both traditional network card and wireless network adapter and Bluetooth and 1394 Firwire might have as many as four icons all beginning Local Area Connection in this "Network Connections" window.

Anyway, so we are looking at your connections in the "Network Connections" window. Let's assume we are doing this on the laptop which may or not be connecting with any success. We find the icon for the adapter we want to check, and right click on it. Then we select Properties.

In there you will see a list of items under a sub-heading on the General tab: This connection uses the following items:

You are looking for one called Intenet Protocol (TCP/IP) and you might have to scroll down to find it at the bottom.

When you find it, select it with the mouse and then hit the Properties button.

You should now have a window open titled Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties. Ideally the window should be pretty much empty with the "Obtain an IP address automatically" radio button already selected (and the "obtain a DNS address automatically" radio button also selected.

If it has any manual settings then I suggest now is the time to remove them completely and set the buttons to automatic. But before you start reconfiguring the laptop I must just ask if the laptop is used with any other network ? E.g. perhaps it has been set up to work on a corporate network with a fixed IP address at the wife's office? If so don't touch it or you'll incur the delayed wrath of the wife's Network Administrator at the office, by proxy!

If you are sure you will not be in trouble by fiddling with it and losing any manual settings that are there already, then click OK and reverse out normally and power down everything normally to the wall socket and try again.

If, however, the settings are already set to automatic then change nothing and reverse out normally. If you are at this point, then maybe it is a firewall problem.

Are you using a proprietory Third Party firewall product like ZoneAlarm or McAfee Firewall Plus? You may have forgotten some restrictive settings in there which allow or disallow individual local IP addresses or perhaps a small range of local IP addresses e.g. 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.102 . You might also have allowed or disallowed the previous router whose default IP address could be slightly different according to its manufacturer as I have already mentioned. E.g. you may have told ZoneAlarm to allow Internet via 192.168.1.1. From what I have just found on Google, your Belkin might have 192.168.2.1 instead, for example. So that would be one reason a pc couldnt connect i.e. if internet was disallowed other than via the wrong gateway IP address!

However unless you DO have an extra software firewall from a TP like ZoneAlarm, this is less likely to be the problem than perhaps some default firewall setting within the firmware on the router.

I use XP's own built in Firewall so don't bother with ZoneAlarm any more, but the firmware firewall in the router is not really optional unless you use a DMZ facility which I'll not go into. Just assume the router firewall is there anyway and you might have to tweak it a tiny bit.

Incidentally, sometimes upgrading the firmware on the router from the LinkSys, Belkin, Netgear website is a useful thing to do. The LinkSys I just installed had a few known bugs in its shipped firmware which did actually mislead and confuse me until I found out about them and upgraded the firmware! But if you do it, be extremely careful to follow the instructions to the letter and especially triple check the version label stamped on the underside of the router. There are umpteen base versions of the same units worldwide and you must use the exact upgrade for your version. You cannot assume that if you find an upgrade to Firmware 1.50 if you have 1.49 that you can use it. The hardware version has match too (not just the model number!). If the upgrade fails then you are stuffed unless you can find a software tool to 'recover' your 'bricked' router.

So then, about the firewall in the router...how might you tweak it? Well, as you have no doubt discovered, the Admin screens in these routers and the functions available are all different, but then again, many of the functions are similar.

The one that unstuck my "The Internet doesn't work now with the new router" problem, was the page that allows specific computers only to connect to the router. You can usually do this a number of ways, but I suggest the best way is to set a range of permissible local IP addresses.

I am guessing, but I think your Belkin automatic DHCP will default to giving 192.168.2.2 up to 192.168.2.254 maximum to any pcs that connect to it. Actually, that reminds me, while you are looking in here at the router Admin screens, you will see one for LAN settings which shows the DHCP IP Pool start address (192.168.2.2) and end address which is probably 192.168.2.254. If the end address is 192.168.2.4 then that means you have restricted it to a maximum of three pcs at any one time (the first three that you power up from scratch). Make sure you don't have such a restriction!

Firewall Client IP filtering is probably not used by default, but if all else looks ok, then this is what might help you. In there, I think you should be able to set a range of allowed local IPs e.g. 192.168.2.2 to 192.168.2.11 (that would be the first ten pc's that requested connection to the router). You could specify them individually on ten lines but that is tedious. You might just specify the whole range instead by inputting "2 ~ 11" ... it should be fairly obvious on the right page.

After you have changed that, and again tried powering down everything completely (hard boots on cable modem, router, and pcs) then you might get lucky.

That's about as far as I can take you, and if you have read this far, I do hope you have had some success!

Otherwise, I have found a webpage that might be helpful. It is UK Belkin specific I think which may not be what you need...

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/hardware/reviews/2004/q4/belkin-f5d7630-4a.html

Good Luck! and a Happy New year to one and all:)

[OzPax1]

All computers use Windows XP, they all have different wireless adapters, some built in and some plug in.

IMHO that is the problem. Try a belkin network adaptors along with up to date drivers and I think you'll find it all works. Do a seachboth in here and google and you'll find this issue (and the fixes etc) discuseed til the cows come hime! :ok:

[boofhead]

Could be. I have managed to get all but one working. The one that does not work sees the network and gives it a strong signal rating, but will not connect. Is there a way to force it to do so? The adapter is Q-Link.

[Keef]

Are the router and the adapter using the same protocol? I scratched my head for a while till I realised my new WiFi was 802.11g and the iPaq 802.11b - and I hadn't set the router to allow both.