Wireless Network Problems

sailorfoley

Hey,

i have a Belkin router sharing a 3Meg Broadband connection with 2 house mates. 1 of them has an 802.11B card and both my other housemate and myself have an 802.11G card. My 2 house mates are having a problem however. The are constantly getting a "Limited or No Connectivity" balloon in the bottom right on the screen above the wireless connection. It says their IP Address is 0.0.0.0.

My router is set up as a DHCP server also.

The weird thing is i never have a problem. My laptop connects and never has an issue. They recently bought their laptops and their wireless cards are a brand i don't recognise. Mine is a centrino laptop. They have all the latest windows updates applied and the problem still persists. There is also one other strange symptom. This only occurs when they are both on the network. When only one of them is logged on they have no problems and when the other logs on, within minutes, they both have "limited or no functionality"

Router setup:

WEP - PSK encryption
Braodcasting on channel 1.
set up as DHCP server.
MAC Filtering on our 3 wireless cards.
Router is working in b/g mode.

Any ideas as to what the problem may be?
Thanks.

Karoma

Set manual IP addresses and ensure that they're unique.

NutJob

Coul you post all your dhcp settings i have a rough idea what might be causing it.

Also could you post fixed ips if you have them


Also just to be clear is only when >1 pc in any combo

sailorfoley

The Settings are:

On The Laptops:

Obtain IP Address Automatically
Obtain DNS Automatically
In the advanced TCP/IP Settings, in the IP Settings tab, its says DHCP enabled.

On The Router:

Only settings are just to turn DHCP on and it set the start IP Address and end IP Address. Also there is the option to set the subnet mask and the duration of the lease on the IP address.

I have the DHCP turned on.
The address range is 192.168.2.50 to 192.168.2.100
The lease time on the IP Addresses is 2 hours
The subnet mask for the network is 255.255.255.0

To clarify the error only occurs when my 2 house mates are on the network together. If it's just me and 1 of my house mates there is no error.

Thanks for your help.

Karoma

ipconfig /all from each machine please.

seamus

There are two main culprits I'd look at here:

1. The MAC filtering. I've had iffy results from this in the past. Try removing all MAC filtering and see how you get on.

2. The 802.11b card. The problem with 802.11b is that as soon as you add it into a mixed network, it bottlenecks the network, and all clients are forced to run at 11Mbps. If the other two machines are set to 802.11g only (or otherwise aren't able to readjust their speed) it could cause problems. Set the 802.11g clients to use only 802.11b mode (most cards should be able to do this). Then add the 802.11b client and see what happens.

sailorfoley

Hey,

i turned off the MAC filtering and set all wireless cards to use B as opposed to G. It seems to be ok so wait and see if the problem comes back.

Thanks for all your help.

seamus

Good stuff.

Your only problem now is that you're limited to 11Mbps across your network, as well as poorer range and throughput performance. Try get all three machines on 802.11g cards as soon as you can. They're cheap enough now.

sailorfoley

Thanks Seamus. I'll get my house mate to move up to a G card ASAP. One question. The router and the 2 G cards had no options to go to G only. They had they option to go to "B and G" as opposed to just G. Now all seems to be ok but the G cards are still operating at G speeds but everyone seems to be working together. I have yet to do a definitive test but the 3 of us seem to be able to work together.

Just wondering, having set the G cards to "B and G" why did this make a difference?

Thanks again. Never knew wireless was such a headache. I've never used it in a mixed environment. didn't think laptops came with cards that were just B anymore.

MunsterCycling

Just to clear up something posted above, 802.11b has greater transmission range than 802.11g but a lower throughput (circa 5.5 Mbs) than 802.11G (circa 22Mbs)

Munster

NutJob

Might want to up that lease to a week for home use two i hade changei ip evere 2 hours always happerns at a bad time.

sailorfoley

Hey everyone,

the problem has presented itself again and still here. The problem to recap is 2 laptops connect no problem. When a 3rd tries to connect the third laptop reports "limited or no connectivity".

The 3rd laptop reports it's ip address as 169.254.26.23 but this is not the range of IP addresses from the router.

Please help as this is driving us all crazy!

HPMan

Are you in range of another wireless network, which may be messing up your settings, ie the unrecognised ip address, not from your router? (I don't know much about wireless netss, but a mate has a vonage wifi phone and with his wireless net down for maintenance, he could make and receive calls; he's lost how, except to think there must be another local unprotected wifi net within range).

MunsterCycling

What is the ssid on this wifi router set to? Please tell me you changed it from the default??

Ok, a 169.254.X.Y address means that its not getting its address from the DHCP server in the router and gives itself and automatic private address. Seeing as this happens on the other two lappies only then it is a very strange one coz one would imagine that your laptop should be affected too if it was a problem with the dhcp. How big is the dhcp pool... ok I see that it is 50 - 100. If the router config is ending with 1 why not set the pool to start at 2 or if the router is 254 then set the pool to start at 1 either way it should work, even the way you have it set it SHOULD work, remember when I went messing with my routers IP... Feckin thing balked and had to hardware reset to get it to work again, lesson learned there.

eoinok

Stall the ball there.

Quickest way around this is to nail your wireless router to transmit at B (11Mbps) only and set your two G (54Mbps) cards to connect at B only.
Do this and your problem will go away.

It wrecks me head when people start raving on about "oh, I have a 54Mbps connection, or even worse, 108Mbps connection to the internet"
I tried explaining to a friend before that this does matter a toss as your DSL pipe going out is only a MAXIMUM 2Mbps. And then if you get contended........
Unless ur friend are gaming locally with each other on the LAN, then I will admit dropping the speed down to 11Mbps you may have some issue with, but if you are not and just connecting to the net, then it is not an issue.

MunsterCycling

Here here re the 3Mbs etc but that doesn't solve the issue now does it?

eoinok wrote:

Stall the ball there.

Quickest way around this is to nail your wireless router to transmit at B (11Mbps) only and set your two G (54Mbps) cards to connect at B only.
Do this and your problem will go away.

It wrecks me head when people start raving on about "oh, I have a 54Mbps connection, or even worse, 108Mbps connection to the internet"
I tried explaining to a friend before that this does matter a toss as your DSL pipe going out is only a MAXIMUM 2Mbps. And then if you get contended........
Unless ur friend are gaming locally with each other on the LAN, then I will admit dropping the speed down to 11Mbps you may have some issue with, but if you are not and just connecting to the net, then it is not an issue.

sailorfoley

eoinok wrote:

Stall the ball there.

Quickest way around this is to nail your wireless router to transmit at B (11Mbps) only and set your two G (54Mbps) cards to connect at B only.
Do this and your problem will go away.

Eionok - if you read previous posts you will know that the router i am using and the G cards in question do not have the options to go to a definitive B environment. They have the options to work in just G environment or mixed (B and G together) .

What does this mean for the router?
This means that the router will serve clients with B and G cards.

What does this mean for the cards?
It means that the cards will connect to a B network or a G network, preferring a G network.

So unfortunately in my situation, while the router is in a B and G set up (it can't be set to just , our G cards are going to try to connect using G. My problem is i can't get these 3 clients to work in this mixed environment.

eoinok wrote:

It wrecks me head when people start raving on about "oh, I have a 54Mbps connection, or even worse, 108Mbps connection to the internet"
I tried explaining to a friend before that this does matter a toss as your DSL pipe going out is only a MAXIMUM 2Mbps. And then if you get contended........
Unless ur friend are gaming locally with each other on the LAN, then I will admit dropping the speed down to 11Mbps you may have some issue with, but if you are not and just connecting to the net, then it is not an issue.

- I never claimed i wanted to use G for bandwidth purposes. I know my connection is not 54Mbps. While i appreciate your help, please try to stay relevant to the problem at hand and not use this thread to rant about your friend. As per MunsterCycling's post - "This doesn't solve the issue now does it?"

eoinok

Sailorfoley, in my line of business I am dealing everyday with wireless stuff so I would like to think that I know what I am talking about. Your Router then will be the 1st one that I will have heard about/come across where you cant nail it down to B only? There is always a little "drop down" menu where you can specify "b & g" or "b only" or something to that effect.
If you will nail down your router, you will force the G cards down to B and your problem will go away.

It wasn;t meant to be a rant about my friend. In my lin of busines I come across the same scenario everyday trying to explain to people the exact same scenario but they still insist they want their wireless connecion to their DSL to be 108Mbps when their DSL might be in some cases 1Mbps even!!
But in the end of the day, they are paying me, so who am I to argue if they are follish enough to throw money around.

sailorfoley

eoinok wrote:

Sailorfoley, in my line of business I am dealing everyday with wireless stuff so I would like to think that I know what I am talking about. Your Router then will be the 1st one that I will have heard about/come across where you cant nail it down to B only? There is always a little "drop down" menu where you can specify "b & g" or "b only" or something to that effect.
If you will nail down your router, you will force the G cards down to B and your problem will go away.

I don't mean to be rude but i know my router. I read the manual. With regards to wireless it has 3 settings in the "drop down" menu.

802.11g Auto
Quote from the manual - "In this mode the router is compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g wireless clients simultaneously"

802.11g Only
Quote from the manual - "802.11g only mode works with 802.11g clients only.

802.11g LRS Mode
Quote from the manual - "To be used with adapters using older drivers or technology"

My router is set to 802.11g Auto which serves both B and G. I have tried it with the 802.11g LRS but this also does not work.

If i could set it just B i would have. I guess the mine is the first router you have ever seen that can't be "nailed down to B"

irlrobins

ZING!

Foxwood

eoinok wrote:

Sailorfoley, in my line of business I am dealing everyday with wireless stuff so I would like to think that I know what I am talking about. Your Router then will be the 1st one that I will have heard about/come across where you cant nail it down to B only? There is always a little "drop down" menu where you can specify "b & g" or "b only" or something to that effect.

Here's a screenshot from my DLink DI-524. It provides a choice of G Mode or Mixed Mode - no B Only.

NutJob

I moved into a house with one of these

Turn off WPA2

Use WPA


To move the channel turn off the wirelles G turbo mode stuff as it fources you on to channel 6.

Its only G for this router and iv even updated the firmware on it. Thinkin of swappin it with a wrt54g.


It does support b but u can set it b only

Foxwood

NutJob wrote:

I moved into a house with one of these
Turn off WPA2
Use WPA
To move the channel turn off the wirelles G turbo mode stuff as it fources you on to channel 6.

Thanks nutjob, but this router is working fine for me just the way it is. I only posted the screenshot to demonstrate that not all routers have a "B Only" mode. The DLink isn't some oddball grey import, it's a fairly widely used bit of kit.