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Thread: Wireless Networking Puzzle

  1. #11
    AOs Resident Troll
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    Personally ...I like the layered approach too...

    But to each his own.

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  2. #12
    Agony Aunty-Online Moira's Avatar
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    Can I just confirm something? If there was something wrong with the way WEP was set up, would the network allow a laptop to connect to it? What I can't understand in all this is why if the wrong key is set or something is skewed, the laptop happily connects, it just won't allow web pages to be viewed. I wish I'd had time to test the LAN, but I didn't. Ryan's laptop was on a different workgroup for a start, so it was never going to connect to the desktop PC, but after I altered that, I just ran out of time completely as we had a plane to catch etc.
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  3. #13
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    Hi Moira

    Ok, You are saying the laptop connects. However if it had an IP of 169.x.x.x it was not connected to the router. The wireless card may have been able to see the connection at full strength. I came across this problem at home before. It told me that the wireless connection was connected but I only had a 169.x.x.x address and could not access resources or surf the net.

    Were you able to see other resources on the network? If you had a 192.x.x.x IP given to you and you could see other resources on the network and still could not surf the net then WEP would not be the cause.

    I dont think you connected fully with the router so therefore had no access to resources. When I had this problem I had installed the software that came with my router. I then choose to use the windows networking facilty to configure my settings. Even though I was putting the correct key into the windows settings I had left the old key in the routers software that was still loading up. This lead me to see the network at full strength but have a 169.x.x.x address.

    Hope this is or some help
    Best of luck
    diamond_ire

  4. #14
    Some Assembly Required ShagDevil's Avatar
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    Moira,
    From what I've read thus far, I'm not entirely sure it's an encryption issue. The 169.x.x.x IP is the default IP the NIC uses when it's not assigned an IP from your DHCP (like the others were saying). I think if it were an encryption issue, you wouldn't be able to connect to the router at all (at least that's what happens with my router (D-Link Router)). If you check out the Event Viewer, I suspect you'll see DHCP errors in the System Log.
    I think you need to log on to that router (by whatever means neccessary) and see what the settings are for the DHCP. Also run IPCONFIG /ALL on the laptop and make sure the NIC is pointing to the correct DHCP server address.
    Good Luck with it.
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  5. #15
    Agony Aunty-Online Moira's Avatar
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    Unhappy

    Thanks for this .... sadly I ran out of time to check the LAN. What happened was this guy restored his laptop (which I had configured to work with WEP and the wireless network) back to his factory settings. The router settings weren't changed at all. When I tried to troubleshoot his problem I inputted the WEP key from the router homepage - I also did this with my own laptop which I was temporarily trying to connect to their network for the day. Neither laptop got anything other than a 169.xxx.xxx.xxx address, although both showed a strong, connected signal.

    Obviously I didn't have time to look at Event Viewer either. I should explain that I'd gone over there to reinstall Windows on my daughter's desktop PC and that took a fair chunk of the day. When Ryan asked me to look at his network settings I had no idea it was going to turn into such a nightmare problem to sort. Both PCs had no problem connecting via cat cable which is what Ryan is having to settle for now.

    (At least their system is probably more secure like this! If they can't connect wirelessly, then hopefully nobody else can).

    I could manually assign DHCP addresses but these made no difference.

    I dont think you connected fully with the router so therefore had no access to resources. When I had this problem I had installed the software that came with my router. I then choose to use the windows networking facilty to configure my settings. Even though I was putting the correct key into the windows settings I had left the old key in the routers software that was still loading up. This lead me to see the network at full strength but have a 169.x.x.x address.
    This puzzles me though. I took the key from the router homepage (first key out of a choice of 4, but from memory, the one they were using) and put that in the appropriate place in the laptop wireless configuration. I ran ipconfig /all (but it didn't tell me anything intelligent). What I can't understand is why DHCP settings should be wrong for the router because nothing changed there. In theory, there was no reason why I shouldn't have been able to put my laptop's MAC address in and with the correct key, connect to their network too.

    I accept that the next move will have to be to remove WEP (and MAC filtering), and see if I can get any sort of wireless connection working. Then I'll need to add encryption and security measures. However I don't think I can afford the time or the money to fly to Belfast for a day before xmas so they will either have to just use wired connections, bring the laptop/router across here when they come for xmas, or somehow fix it with my remote help (not something I'm confident will succeed).

    At least they have a network and the internet - it might be safer to leave well alone until I can spend some time on it over there. But it would be good to have some ideas when I do try and sort it. There's nothing worse than being unable to troubleshoot a computer problem someone else has been confident you're going to be able to sort.
    Last edited by Moira; November 13th, 2006 at 10:09 PM.
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  6. #16
    Senior Member BrainStop's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Moira
    When I connected my laptop via ethernet cable, the internet was fine. So was the desktop PC which solely connects via ethernet cable, which makes it even more peculiar.
    Hi Moira,

    Quick question. When you connected in wired mode, was that directly to the router?

    It could be that you have a DHCP conflict between the router and the wireless router. At home, I run a DSL router connected to a Linksys WRT54. I had to create two subnets basically to prevent the two routers from getting confused.

    As such, I have my router running with a 192.168.1.1 address. The Linksys is connected as 192.168.1.33 on one side, but then running a 192.168.1.129 subnet for other devices to connect to it.

    Without actually looking at the hardware config, it's hard to say more, but that could be the issue.

    Cheers,

    BrainStop
    "To estimate the time it takes to do a task, estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by two, and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. Thus we allocate two days for a one-hour task." -- Westheimer's Rule

  7. #17
    Just Another Geek
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    Quote Originally Posted by steve.milner
    Why forget about MAC filtering. If you use MAC filtering and WEP2 then valid MAC addresses can't be sniffed, adding an extra layer of security into your wireless.
    MAC addresses are send in the clear.. So is your SSID.. MAC filtering adds nothing to your security. The only difference between WEP and WEP2 is the key length.
    Oliver's Law:
    Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

  8. #18
    Senior Member very_unhappy's Avatar
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    Can you "get a web page" just by entering it's IP addy. I've had this similar problem before and the cause was DNS.

    Also ... why are you messing w/ encryption while you still don't have working connection?
    /dev/humor: not found

  9. #19
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    I have the same router/access point that you are describing and have had the same problem of getting a DHCP lease on my laptop though the wireless network interface (I could connect fine using wire). The problem ended up being with the software firewall on my laptop and not the access point. Since it hadn't been mentioned yet, I thought I would.

  10. #20
    AOs Resident Troll
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    Good one fL4t_t1Rz and welcome to AO

    when restoring the laptop....the firewall may need tweaking.

    MLF
    How people treat you is their karma- how you react is yours-Wayne Dyer

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