Wireless Connection but unable to browse

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Hi there,

I have a Linksys router on my highspeed desktop, and have just purchased a wireless adapter card for my laptop. Its all installed, and working fine. I am able to find my router and shows that I am connected at about 80%, so I know I have a connection.

Problem I'm having is that I cannot browse the net, or do anything for that matter. I've tried tweaking settings, but no luck...

Any ideas?

Thanks,
 
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02-04-2006 11:03 PM
tccrep Hi there,

I have a Linksys router on my highspeed desktop, and have just purchased a wireless adapter card for my laptop. Its all installed, and working fine. I am able to find my router and shows that I am connected at about 80%, so I know I have a connection.

Problem I'm having is that I cannot browse the net, or do anything for that matter. I've tried tweaking settings, but no luck...

Any ideas?

Thanks,
You have a Linksys WRT54G I suspect..?
Are you able to browse the net on your computer which is connected with ethernet and just not on your laptop which is connected wirelessly?

Try turning all security on your router off and broadcast the ssid and then turn ur firewalls off and see if that does anything.. if not, unplug ur router for 15 secs and restart your laptop and then reconnect.
 
Agreed but wait... there's more

Boy, where to start. If you can point your browser at your router and get a login then most of your battle is done. You need to look at the status page of said router and note the WAN IP Address. If it's 0.0.0.0, you need to reboot the router. Sounds funny but I've seen routers unable to get DHCP from their modem until it's reboot and re-registers itself. If you have your firewalling turned off, then check the router's security and make sure WEP encryption isn't set. Although it's a good idea to have this on and I highly recommend it, for troubleshooting, shut it down until you can make things work. Basically, if your computer has an IP address from the router and the router has an IP address from the Cable Modem then everything should work.

One important topic. Your ethernet card should be set to DHCP. If you choose to set it to static, make sure the DNS entry is set to the router's address (I think it's normally 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 out of the box). The router will forward DNS requests properly. If you put in incorrect DNS entries in your network settings, you will get this symptom. To determine if it's a DNS problem, go to a command prompt and ping 216.109.112.135 If you get a return but not from pint yahoo.com, then you havea DNS problem. If there is no return from the IP address, then you still havea routing problem.

SifuGreg
 
I am having a very similar problem with my wireless network. I just bought a d-link wireless router and a wireless pci card for my desktop computer. I hooked it all up, installed all the drivers and according to windows I am connected to the wireless network with a very good signal strength, however I cant connect to the internet. I've read over the replies to this, and if you guys think my problem is the same could you please go into more detail on how to do the things you've suggested? I'm very new to wireless networking. I should also mention that when I run a cord from my wireless router to my computer I get on the internet no problem.

Thanks much.
 
The import thing is knowing that you are in fact hooked up to the wireless router. It would be a great help and keep me from narrating a book on networking if you could go to START=>RUN type CMD and press {ENTER}. From there type IPCONFIG /all and press {ENTER}. Then report what you see specifically under the wireless adapter. It should look similar to what is below. This way, I can help you with specifics.
===================================
Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : D-Link AirPlus DWL-G520 Wireless PC Adapter(rev.B)
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-13-46-6E-E5-68
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.101
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
 
Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix: stp.wi.charter.com
Descripton: IEEE 802.11g Wireless cardbus/PCI Adapter
Physical Address: 00-40-F4-E1-DD-27
Dhcp Enabled: Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled: Yes
IP Address: 192.168.0.103
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server: 192.168.0.1
DNS Servers: 192.168.0.1
Lease obtained: Friday, Feburary 10, 2006 10:01:40 AM
Lease Expires: Friday, Feburary 17, 2006 10:01:40 AM
 
Exellent, everything looks good there. Now, Please point your web browser to 192.168.0.1 and log in as admin (or whatever you may have changed it to) and look for the STATUS tab. Your version may call it something different but I want to know what your WAN IP ADDRESS is. If it's 0.0.0.0, then there is your problem. Your WAN side of the router did not pick up it's DHCP address. Reboot the cable modem if this is the case. After reboot it can take up to 10 min (normally much less) to get that address. You can periodically hit the RELEASE and RENEW buttons about once a minute until it grabs an address.
If, however, there is an address instead of 0.0.0.0, release and renew anyway. If it returns wiith a good address, we'll assume that the router and modem are talking.

Run through those steps and report back. I'll be home a little later and watch for this post and help you finalize things then.
 
Okay, looks like we found part of your problem. You're double routing. 192.168.1.X is a protected subnet for Private addresses. I can't remember if you said you had Cable or DSL. I'm assuming based on this info that it's DSL. DSL normally comes with a router where cable usually comes with a modem. At least that's how it is around here. Although there are ways to make double routing work, it will bite you in the **** in the future when you want to use RDP to remote control your PC from the office or other things. Do not despair, all you have to do is "bridge" one of the two routers. The Linksys has a method for turning off NAT (network address translation) as will the DSL router (if it's an ActionTec I can probably help). Otherwise I can dust off my old linksys and hook it up but you can probably find what you need based on the info I'm providing. It may be best to bridge the Linksys so you don't take any chances on losing your internet connection completely. I'll be around this weekend. Let me know what you find.
 
Ok, thanks. I actually have cable, but I live in a duplex and a friend of mine lives below me. We share an internet connection, modem goes to his router then up to mine. So, if I remove one router, which I can do now that I have wireless, then it should work? One question tho, double routing is only bad for wireless? Because it works just fine through ethernet cables.
 
I just ran downstairs to see if my friend could access the wireless network with his laptop and he has absolutely no problems. Is it possible that I have some sort of virus or something messing with things on my computer?
 
2 Things, you friend isn't double routing, he's going through his router (from a protected subnet) out the internet. Let's say for example, his computer gets the first address from his router which is a Linksys. That DHCP server givew him 192.168.1.1 although his WAN ip address is 64.111.12.2 (just made it up). A packet leaves and knows how to return to his subnet. Now, you connect to his router with yours. His computer dishes your WAN address 192.168.1.103 because you're on the inside of that router. You also have a Linksys router out of the box and it's going to give you the SAME ADDRESS he has! So your computer and his both are sitting there with a 192.168.1.1. When the packet head out to the internet and eventually comes back, it can't fine your computer because it's looking for it on HIS network! In order for what you have to work, you need to be sure you are on a different SUBNET from him. Or, alternatively, just bridge your router and depend on his to provide the security of routing between subnets. Why it works with your wire I'm not sure. Only thing I can figure is because you are using the wired connection, you have a different IP address and somehow his system knows how to send it back to you. You might want to do that IPCONFIG command we did before looking at your wired connection. This would tell us a few things. I can't guarantee this is exactly what's going on but as you can probably agree, like I stated before, your configuration has the potential to bite you in the ****. I doubt very seriously you have a virus causing the problem. There was some spyware that messed up internet routeing once before. I would suspect that would effect both your network connections. Never hurts to check. You should run Spybot Search & Destroy with the latest updates
(http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html.
It has the ability to repair the socket should it have been changed by malware.
 
His laptop isn't hooked through his router, he has a regular wired router and its not plugged into his laptop, he's getting his wireless signal directly from my router. I'm not understanding how two routers would affect my computers connection but not his. If you're right tho, then taking his router off the network should allow my computer to connect wirelessly, correct?
 
Oops, I may have misunderstood your connection. It sounded to me like you had your router plugged into his to get to the internet. Meaning that the cable modem was on the WAN side of his router. The reason for that assumption is that the WAN (or Internet) address your router has is on a 192.168 subnet which is not public which means it's not connected directly to the internet but again being routed by something else! Please tell me what the WAN port of your wireless router plugs into.
 
Here's how it works. The cable modem plugs into the WAN port of his router, then we have a cable running from his router up to the WAN port of my router, which is the wireless one. Then from my router I have a cable running into my computer because its the only way I can get connected to the internet even tho windows tells me I'm connected to the wireless network and I have a good signal. My friends lap top tho can connect to the wireless network with no problem at all, and he has no internet problems either.
 
try (friends router) ethernet port 1 to (your wireless router) ethernet port 1.
(your router) turn off DHCP, ip address = 192.168.0.2 (or whatever ip address you use, just make sure its not a .1 range at the end
(your computer via wireless) network connections>wireless LAN (or something similar)>(right click) properties, set your ip address to manual and type in 192.168..... the last number up from your router, subnet mask 255.255.255.0 . try it.. may help
 
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