Wireless router problems

December 25, 2004 5:35 AM

So I just set up a wireless router in our house, but something's awry. We have two wired connections--one PC and one XBox Live--and one wireless Apple laptop. If the XBox is off, the PC has a fine connection, but if the XBox is connected, the PC gets a spotty connection at best, and usually can't connect at all. The laptop connects wirelessly with no problem regardless of the other things. Can anyone tell me 1. why the XBox would kill the PC connection and 2. how to fix it?

ChristmasPresentFilter. IncompetentNetworkAdminFilter.

posted by The Michael The to computers & internet (8 answers total)

I'm guessing that everyone is set at DHCP (dynamic) and the router holds a lease time of at least a day.

Two items think they can have the same IP address.

Restart your router...and this should go away.
posted by filmgeek at 6:08 AM on December 25, 2004

It sounds like you have a netgear router.
posted by drezdn at 7:02 AM on December 25, 2004

Yes, Netgear... um... this is bad?
posted by The Michael The at 7:03 AM on December 25, 2004

Sounds like filmgeek is on the right track. I would only add that you want to make sure that everything is connected and turned on when you power cycle the router, and then it should correctly assign addresses.
posted by Who_Am_I at 9:03 AM on December 25, 2004

Okay, so I tried the restart with everything on and connected, and it seemed okay... for a few minutes. And then the computer again stopped being able to connect. The Firefox status bar either reads "Waiting for foo.com" or "Connecting to foo.com" and then times out or says "foo.com cannot be found etc etc".

FYI, I've been reading about Netgear routers and their connections with XBoxLive, and it seems that many have a problem with the XBox connection is dropped, but I haven't read anything about the problem I've been having, with other wired comps on the network dropping.

One last thing: the XBox doesn't (both before and after the restarts) show up in the ip list of attached devices in the router setup page, even while it's definitely being used online. Hmm...
posted by The Michael The at 9:29 AM on December 25, 2004

Is there a way to set the Xbox to a manually configured IP?

Set it outside the range of the DHCP for the router and you should be fine.
posted by Megafly at 11:23 AM on December 25, 2004

Problem solved. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions... it turned out that the problem was a MAC address that was previously changed on the XBox for a previous setup, and that needed to be changed again.
posted by The Michael The at 11:31 AM on December 25, 2004

The reason I asked was because I have a Netgear router and they seem to have a tendancy to develop odd problems. For example, occassionally, the router won't let my computer hookup to the internet, and after I unplug and replug in the modem, it will start working again.
posted by drezdn at 5:34 PM on December 25, 2004