Problem with Eircom Netopia Wireless

joker77

The problem is down in my Auntie's house, I was having a look at it last night seeing I'm labelled the computer expert by everyone in the family....

She has Eircom broadband, with a Netopia wireless router, actually 2 of them because Eircom sent her a replacement because they thought the problem was with the router. Ok here's what's happening - when she plugs the laptop to the router via ethernet, it works fine. But neither router appears to be broadcasting any wireless signal. I brought along my laptop, which has a Wifi card and works fine, and it didn't pick up any networks in range. I tried going into the browser based settings (19.34.127.254 or something like that) - Wireless was enabled and the light was on. I tried Disabling it, then re-enabling, still no joy. I tried this on both routers, and when I did the green light for Wireless went off when disabled and came on when enabled, so it didn't look like there was any problem there.

Now another Auntie lives across the road, and has the exact same setup with Eircom broadband and the Netopia wireless router, so I popped over to hers and my laptop saw her network no problems.

I'm a bit stumped, I find it hard to believe the both routers are faulty, but I've tried turning off and turning back on the Wireless on both, with no effect. Broadband via ethernet is fine on both as well.

Anyone have a similar issue?

Cheers

Shamrogue

I have the same router for less than 2 months now and twice I had to power it down for a minute and back on to get the wireless part to work. Give it a try.

Sham

joker77

Shamrogue wrote:

I have the same router for less than 2 months now and twice I had to power it down for a minute and back on to get the wireless part to work. Give it a try.

Cheers for that, although yea I would have tried that when switching the 2 routers

azezil

Have a look at the bottom of the netopia, what model is it... 334 ?

There's a small pinhole at the back beside the power, try sticking a pen in there, hold it in for 10seconds then release. (its a reset button).

MunsterCycling

Has the wep / wpa network key been input into the pc? If encription is on then turn it off until you get it sorted but remember to turn it back on or you may get leechers...;)

As azezil says go for a hardware reset by pushing the button underneath but remember to note down all the settings as they'll be wiped when you reset.

zilog_jones

Eircom should be shot for using those crappy routers...

azezil

MunsterCycling wrote:

As azezil says go for a hardware reset by pushing the button underneath but remember to note down all the settings as they'll be wiped when you reset.

Nah they won't, they're hardcoded, if you run the eircom cd you'll get all the wep settings etc set up automatically.

adjutant

hi Joker,
I have had a netopia wireless router for over a year now! Worked like a charm for the first 10 months, never lost the connection once!

Then for some reason it started to drop the connection, id restart the router and it would be fine for 20 minutes or so.. then it would drop it again! Over the space of two weeks, the time continued to decrease until it reached the stage that it would pick up the connection for 2 minutes and then drop it and not be able to pick it up again!

I rang errorcon numerous times and when i eventually got through or they picked up after i was on hold for 20 minutes, they talked me through everything. Im fairly clued in myself so i had done all the basics already but i went along with it in case they came up with anything new! I tried everything, reseting the router, changing the wireless channels, etc. No Joy!

Broadband works fine with an ethernet cable, so eircom said that its not their problem. All they are responsible for is getting the broadband to my house, not the wireless part! Its frustrating as hell, cos it worked fine for the first 10 months so i cant understand whats changed!

azezil

adjutant: did you try upgrading the firmware on the router, updating your wireless adapter drivers... did you get any new electrial appliances since, move the wireless router... start using a cordless phone, anything like that?

adjutant

azezil.. i tried everything! updating driver, uninstall, reinstall etc etc.. i have a cordless phone right beside the router but that has been there from day 1.. I have also tried disconnecting that and still no joy!

Its strange how it worked for the first 10 months perfectly but then gradually started to drop the connection until it stopped picking it up altogether.. even now when i connect via ethernet, it will find the wireless connection and lose it after about 3 minutes!

joker77

hey - thanks for all the replies!

I was on to eircom last night and the guy on the phone was actually quite techy and got the problem sorted.

What he did was go into the router configuration, and switch the channel that the router was broadcasting on. I think there was a dropdown list with values of 1 - 20, it was set at 7 for some reason, I switched this to 1, turned it off and back on (I think!), same with pc, and it worked!

Hope this helps anyone with the same problem!

sirlinux

all the eircom routers are set for channel 6, so if one or two of your neighbours get broadband from eircom it's gets very crowded on channel 6 causing endless problems, so changing channel is a good idea, 1 or 13 are a good distance from 6.

MunsterCycling

Let us be reminded that there are only 3 distinct channels in the wifi ism band channels 1, 6 & 11

dub45

MunsterCycling wrote:

Let us be reminded that there are only 3 distinct channels in the wifi ism band channels 1, 6 & 11

Was hoping someone would mention this - can you elaborate on this please?

MunsterCycling

*Frequencies and channels

The 2.4GHz band is used in 802.11b\g. The spectrum is divided into evenly sized pieces distributed over the band as individual channels. The channels are 22MHz wide, but are only separated by 5MHz. This means that adjacent channels overlap, and can interfere with each other. This is represented in attached pic.

Channels and center frequencies for 802.11b. Note that channels
1, 6, and 11 do not overlap.



* Extracted from Wireless Networking in the Developing World. Link to which was posted up on boards.ie not too long ago, interesting read.

Marklar

I'd appreciate if some of you could help me also re the Netopia wireless router that comes with Eircom - I actually switched to BT based on price about 6 months ago, but kept the Netopia wireless router because BT did not so them. Anyway, the problem I have is that I have no idea to "secure" my wireless access as the instructions from Eircom are not great, and I am aware that I am pretty much offering free piggybacking to all my neighbours at present - and if any of them are real computer whizzes, they can have a look at my computer as well I guess. Anyway, if anyone could give me directions on how to secure this, or point me in the direction of a thread on this subject, I would be grateful.

Many Thanks