Home Network; Buffalo WHR-HP-G54

[Schmutz]

I have set up a home network with the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless router between two Windows XP PC's (one ethernet, one wireless). It also provides wireless internet to the games consoles

I have two remaining problems that I hope you can help me out with;

1) When I restart the wireless PC it disconnects from the network

2) I cannot connect to multiplayer LAN games between the computers

1...
When I restart the wireless PC I must right click the network connection and select REPAIR before I am able to access the network(and internet, of course). My only guess is that this could be to do with the STATIC IP address I assigned to the computer to enable port forwarding to work (for bit torrent software)

2...
Using Command and Conquer 3 as an example, neither PC can see the other in the Multiplayer-->Network lobby. My only thoughts on this are that I need to forward some ports to play over the network??? Both computers can access the others shared files and folders, and modify them. I also have had success connecting to multiplayer games before by removing the internet connection and connecting the computers directly to eachother using an ethernet cable

Thanks for helping, please explain things in detail (networking newbie!)

 

[Schmutz]

any suggestions? I'm clueless

 

[NetCablesPlus]

For #1, I think that your suspicions are right. Let the router assign the IP address and then, once that it has, port forward to that assigned IP. That is how I do my port forwarding, anyway.

 

[DelJo63]

Have you updated the router firmware? This is always the first action for #1.
While you're at it, update the NIC and WiFi drivers -- they often have updates too.

On #2; gaming frequently requires port forwarding. However, your router can only
forward any given port or port range to one LAN address. Thus two computers on
your LAN can not play the same game.

 

[Schmutz]

Have you updated the router firmware? This is always the first action for #1.
While you're at it, update the NIC and WiFi drivers -- they often have updates too.

On #2; gaming frequently requires port forwarding. However, your router can only
forward any given port or port range to one LAN address. Thus two computers on
your LAN can not play the same game.

The latest firmware I have seen is V1.40, released 08/29/2006. If I log into my routers configuration I can see that my firmware version is 1.40 so I don't know what to do there, other then hope that I haven't found an updated version (I can't be sure, but 2 years without any updates seems strange...) I have also seen custom firmwares around, but it looks like the features offered by them would only be appreciated by advanced users. The wireless adapter I'm using is ASUS WIFI-AP solo version 6.6.16.1, and I've found V5.1230.0530.2006 on this site, along with a lot of other driver updates :approve: I'm going to try these tomorrow morning

About the gaming issue, it is unfortunate to see that my router cannot support LAN gaming (what routers can support LAN gaming? Are there any work arounds?), the fallback of connecting the two computers directly together via ethernet always remains I suppose

Netcablesplus, I can try using automatic IP addresses again, but it wasn't until I configured a static IP address that bit torrent software would operate correctly. When I think about it, just after installing Windows XP (without SP2/3/updates) I did not have to repair the network connection each time I restarted the computer, but it is only after installing all OS updates that the problem has began. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that installing later drivers for the wireless adapter will do the trick