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The router fails to pick up a WAN IP address via DHCP. A competing brand of wireless router succeeds, so I know it's not the ISP or DHCP itself. I bought the router used, and did not get a CD with it; perhaps this problem is the reason they were selling it. Please advise.
Thank you. I should have mentioned in my original post that I have been through the onboard menus and don't see anything relevant to changing the DHCP address-acquisition process. The log -- trying to recall from memory, since obviously I am on my _other_ router to type this -- shows something about the process "timing out (I think) in ____WAIT state" while trying to use DHCP to obtain an address. As a programmer with no direct knowledge of DHCP, but the ability to make an educated guess, it looks like this router simply isn't "doing DHCP" in the manner my ISP requires. (Has DHCP changed since, oh, 2003 or so? Maybe I'll look for a firmware upgrade for the router...)Thank you. I should have mentioned in my original post that I have been through the onboard menus and don't see anything relevant to changing the DHCP address-acquisition process. The log -- trying to recall from memory, since obviously I am on my _other_ router to type this -- shows something about the process "timing out (I think) in ____WAIT state" while trying to use DHCP to obtain an address. As a programmer with no direct knowledge of DHCP, but the ability to make an educated guess, it looks like this router simply isn't "doing DHCP" in the manner my ISP requires. (Has DHCP changed since, oh, 2003 or so? Maybe I'll look for a firmware upgrade for the router...)
Late-breaking bulletin: problem is solved! I don't remember where (my memory is terrible), but somewhere I found a user's guide (maybe at D-Link's website?) that gave a setup procedure that included "click[ing] 'Clone MAC Address,'" a step that I hadn't (wouldn't have!) thought of. I went through the procedure as given, and the thing started working!
Man, there's nothing like having actual documentation.
(The reason for doing all this was because my wife's new laptop wouldn't connect wirelessly to the NetGear router I was formerly using, where her old laptop WOULD. Now that I've switched to the D-Link, her new laptop connects flawlessly and the old one's connection is intermittent.)Late-breaking bulletin: problem is solved! I don't remember where (my memory is terrible), but somewhere I found a user's guide (maybe at D-Link's website?) that gave a setup procedure that included "click[ing] 'Clone MAC Address,'" a step that I hadn't (wouldn't have!) thought of. I went through the procedure as given, and the thing started working!
Man, there's nothing like having actual documentation.
(The reason for doing all this was because my wife's new laptop wouldn't connect wirelessly to the NetGear router I was formerly using, where her old laptop WOULD. Now that I've switched to the D-Link, her new laptop connects flawlessly and the old one's connection is intermittent.)
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You can hook the router up and go into the settings by when it is hooked up to your computer, type in http://192.168.0.1 and the password is usually user or admin. the password is usually password, unless it was changed. you may be able to change settings to fix this problem through that GUI
try to have your computer obtain an IP address automatically. this may fix the problem. if not, what is your exact make and model of the router you are troubleshooting. i can look up more information for youtry to have your computer obtain an IP address automatically. this may fix the problem. if not, what is your exact make and model of the router you are troubleshooting. i can look up more information for you
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Hello,
If your computer is not properly authenticated to your wireless router or if DHCP is turned off in the router an invalid address or (windows auto configure address of 169.x.x.x) may occur since windows can not find a DHCP server, it assigns its own default address space to your PC.
1. If your PC is connected via wireless make sure you input the correct wep / wpa or wpa2 password.
2. If your PC is connected via cable reboot the router and see if it gets a valid address. If it still doesn't, you may need to reset the router by pressing and holding the reset for min 5 seconds. You may have DHCP disabled which is causing this issue so resetting the router will re-enable that.
Do you have more then one PC connected to your network? Do they all get 169 addresses or just one? If just one has this issue then it could be the network card (try removing it from device manager and reboot the PC so it finds it again and reconfigures it) IF the PC is connected via cable, try another cable. Make sure the PC is connected to a LAN port not a WAN port.
If resetting the router and everything else does nothing, you may need to replace the router.
Chris
How to determine the WAN configuration or Interntet configuration of a SOHO Router?
1. Connect the computer to the Modem via Ethernet cable. Make sure you are able to going online
2. After confirming you are online. Go to Start->Run. Type "cmd" on the Run window.
3. Type "ipconfig" on the command prompt or Black window or DOS window
4. You will be getting IP address,Subnet Mask and Default Gateway
There are 4 possibilities of IP address you can get
i)Public IP address under PPP adapter.
-Router has to be configured in PPPoE mode to get a WAN IP. This will require a Username and Password from ISP
ii) Public IP address under PPP adapter and Private IP address under Ethernet adapter
-Router has to be configured in PPPoE mode to get a WAN IP. This will require a Username and Password from ISP
iii)Public IP address under Ethernet adapter
-Router has to be configured in Dynamic IP or DHCP mode to get a WAN IP
-If it is still not getting a WAN IP address.
* Click Mac clone on the router's WAN configuration
* Power-cycle modem and Router.
iv)Just a Private IP address under Ethernet adapter
-Router has to be configured in Dynamic IP or DHCP mode to get a WAN IP
-If it is still not getting a WAN IP address.
* Power-cycle Modem and router.
After determining the WAN mode, it is time to configure the Router
1. Connect the Modem to the WAN port of the router. Connect the computer to the LAN port
2. Go to Start->Run. Type "cmd" on the Run window.
3. Type "ipconfig" on the command prompt or Black window or DOS window
4. You will be getting IP address,Subnet Mask and Default Gateway. The Default Gateway will the IP address of your router
5. Open a Web browser and type http://192.168.1.1(where this is the default IP of the router. This will be different from each manufacturer) on the address bar.
6. Go to WAN settings or Internet settings and select the options based on the above mentioned possibilities
You must enable the DHCP setting on wireless router if you've configured
the computer's wireless adapter to obtain an IP address automatically.
If not you will get the "failed to acquire an IP address" error when you
try to connect to wireless network! Also don't forget to configure big
enough IP range on router's DHCP setting, because the router won't be
able to assign IP to 6 computers if you only configured 5 IP space on
router.
[Start]
[Run]
[cmd]
A dark "DOS" windows will appear
At the prompt, type: ipconfig
press [ENTER]
Note the "IP Address" (probably 192.168.1.2)
type: ipconfig /renew
press [ENTER]
Note the IP Address
If it has changed, then you are ok. Type: exit and press [ENTER]
If it did not change, then try this on the other computer.
If that didn't change either, the go to the Control Panel
[Network Settings]
Find the wireless or wired network adapter and Right-Click
Choose "Prpoerties"
In the Properties window, double-click "IP Address"
See the IP Address assigned? change the last digit by one number.
Example: if the IP Address is 192.168.1.2 then change to 192.168.1.3
My first guess is that your Dlink ADSL modem is really a modem router, so you are getting double routing. Sometimes this works just fine, though, so I'm not confident that's the whole explanation. You'll need to setup your IP plan carefully set the D-Link modem(router?) to bridging mode & the DLink wireless router does the login to Exetel. DLink wireless router WAN side: DHCP + login to Exetel DLink wireless router LAN side: 192.168.0.1 Subnet 255.255.255.0 DHCP on: range 192.168.0.10 to .20 DNS Servers: 220.233.0.3, 220.233.0.4 with PC's wireless adaptor set to DHCP so picks up eg: IP address: 192.168.0.10 Gateway address: 192.168.0.1 DNS Servers: 220.233.0.3, 220.233.0.4
Make sure you are plugging the SMC into the WAN port on the Linksys router and not the LAN ports. Your internet connection (which is your SMC) should always plug into your WAN port on the Linksys. Any computers that you may need to plug in, like Desktops that are "wired" and not "wireless", should plug into the LAN ports on the Linksys. If you are not using the WAN port on the Linksys for your SMC modem, then that would explain why you cannot get to the internet on wireless or wired computers.
Here's why you are getting the "low connectivity" message:
Computers don't understand why the Internet is connecting or not connecting...so the "low connectivity" message you keep receiving has nothing to do with your wireless signal strength. To a computer NIC, "low connectivity" means your network adapter could not find a DHCP server and receive a valid IP address. When this happens, your network adapter assigns an IP address to your computer in the following range...169.254.0.0, and will display the "low connectivity" message until it is able to receive a valid private IP address from the DHCP server. You can verify this by going to START | RUN and typing "cmd" (without the quotes), then hit ENTER. A black box will pop up....then type "ipconfig" (without the quotes) and hit ENTER. This will show you your IP address, subnet mask, and gateway address, and you can verify that your IP address is in the 169.254.0.0 range. A valid private IP address is typically in the 192.168.0.0 range, but could also be in the 10.0.0.0 range, or the 172.16.31.0 range.
Also, make sure you have DHCP server enabled on the Linksys router for the LAN. This will ensure your "wired" and "wireless" computers receive a valid IP address.
The WAN port on your Linksys router should be configured to "Obtain an IP address automatically using DHCP".
it seems that ur PC & cable modem configuration is ok, now the problem is with ur router WAN interface configuration. the problem would be one out of 2 - first to check whether ur router wan interface is configured properly to obtain IP address from DHCP (if possible, u can give the static ip address with same series as cable modem) second to check with ur ISP.
How could I possibly be smarter than the Linksys tech?
Do your computers have fixed IP addresses or obtain DHCP from the main router? You need to know this because you also need to let one or the other serve DHCP. If it were my system, I'd let the main router serve and the access points just exist.
For that to happen, you need to pick a fixed IP address outside of the IP addresses that can be assigned by your equipment, or pick one that is unused by your network devices.
Unplug the WAN cord from the Linksys and set your computer to 192.168.0.5 or 1.5, depending on what the Linksys does by default. Log into the Linksys and make it use a fixed IP address on the WAN side to whatever you need. Now, as I said above, I'd trun OFF LAN DHCP so it gets DHCP from your network router.
Now reset your laptop to use DHCP, power down the Linksys and plug it into the netrwork and power it up. From any computer on your network, you should be able to go to the router's fixed IP address and be looking at the login screen. Log in, change your password, and you should be up and running :-)
Note that there are a TON of variations on this theme, so don't despair if it fails to work. The key is knowing what your network requires.
I'm not sure this is the issue but it is worthy of review. Routers are designed to separate networks or more properly subnets assuming you have the wan side of one router connected to the ISP and the wan side of the other router connected to the first router. You have two subnets in your house and they cannot be addressed the same. If the lan side of each router is addressed as 192.168.0.1 you have a duplicate IP address confusing situation that could well cause the devices to completely shutdown as you indicate. The first step of the resolution is fairly simple configure the LAN side of the second router to have 192.168.2.1 as its address. Assuming further that both subnets have masks of 255.255.255.0. The first router's subnet is 192.168.0 and the second router's subnet is 192.168.2 -- they are different and that is correct. The WAN side of the first router is configured correctly or it would not have worked with the satellite. The WAN side of the second router needs an address in the first routers subnet such as 192.168.0.2 if you wish to statically assign it. However this can successfully be defaulted to a dynamic IP address too. Configured in the stated manner the routers should work successfully. They can both have DHCP enabled for their own subnets. Computers hooked to the second subnet could still fail to access the internet if they lack suitable DNS addresses either provided by the router or statically configured in the wireless adapter configuration.
A second alternative would be to have a lan port on the second router attached to a lan port of the first router. now you have a single subnet and have effectively dumbed down the second router to being either a switch or a hub not bad. However there are issues here too. If you did not shutdown DHCP services on the second router you could have two routers competing to assign duplicate addresses to machines as they join the network which will make for unreliable and somewhat random failures of the networks to service attached machines -- so turn off DHCP on the second router. Should the second router have a static IP address on the wan side make sure it is unique and not in the first router's subnet. The lan side of the second router should be assigned a unique address in the first routers subnet although it will not really be used for anything.
If you have any questions please respond with a comment to this problem.
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Thank you. I should have mentioned in my original post that I have been through the onboard menus and don't see anything relevant to changing the DHCP address-acquisition process. The log -- trying to recall from memory, since obviously I am on my _other_ router to type this -- shows something about the process "timing out (I think) in ____WAIT state" while trying to use DHCP to obtain an address. As a programmer with no direct knowledge of DHCP, but the ability to make an educated guess, it looks like this router simply isn't "doing DHCP" in the manner my ISP requires. (Has DHCP changed since, oh, 2003 or so? Maybe I'll look for a firmware upgrade for the router...)
Late-breaking bulletin: problem is solved! I don't remember where (my memory is terrible), but somewhere I found a user's guide (maybe at D-Link's website?) that gave a setup procedure that included "click[ing] 'Clone MAC Address,'" a step that I hadn't (wouldn't have!) thought of. I went through the procedure as given, and the thing started working!
Man, there's nothing like having actual documentation.
(The reason for doing all this was because my wife's new laptop wouldn't connect wirelessly to the NetGear router I was formerly using, where her old laptop WOULD. Now that I've switched to the D-Link, her new laptop connects flawlessly and the old one's connection is intermittent.)
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