Wireless Connections Failing

May 28, 2006 7:16 PM

Help connecting to the internet needed! I'm in a new house and the internet all of a sudden stopped working. My wireless can "see" several networks, have a strong signal and good speed, but I don't get assigned a network address. (the networks are unsecured.) Sometimes I'll connect yet have "limited or no connectivity". Why would my connection suddenly stop working? I have no viruses, I checked.

Also, can I run two routers at the same time? I'd like to use my secured network at the place, but there are only four keys and five girls. Can I run a connection from a modem to a router, then to another router? Would that work? Any info you have is appreciated!

posted by gilsonal to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Regarding your second question: You don't need a second router. You only need to set one WEP key on your router, and everybody can use that one.
posted by zsazsa at 7:49 PM on May 28, 2006

"limited or no connectivity" usually means that the signal is very weak. Are these access points inside your house? Or, are you seeing access points that are possibly run by tenants in some of the surrounding houses/apartments? I would caution against using other peoples internet connections as, while the debate is still raging about it being considered "theft", it is generally considered to be a bad idea.

The internet connection that you were using before, is it provided by the landlords or another tenant? It's possible that the access point was moved, or re-configured such that anonymous or unsecured connectivity is no longer available. I would talk to the person who provided the internet connection in the first place (assuming you know who it is) to see if something changed on that end.

As for the second question, zsazsa's suggestion is good. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by adding a second router unless the "keys" you're referring to are the physical ethernet ports on the back of the router... ? A wireless access point should handle light-to-medium wireless traffic from 5 people without any issues. Just secure your own access point and then hand out the pre-shared key (PSK) to the people you want to connect.

Do you have a physical internet connection to use with the router? It sounds like you were using an anonymous, unsecured connection provided by someone you may not know.
posted by purephase at 8:02 PM on May 28, 2006

When you say "my wireless can 'see' several networks", do you mean that your laptop computer sees several wireless networks as available to connect to? Do you know what the name of your wireless network is? Is it one of those available?

Ditto zsazsa, you all can use the same key. Most routers just have one key set.

Do you have a WIRED computer using the same router? If so, does that one have internet connectivity? That will determine a lot.

Try power cycling the router.

For your last set of questions, I'm afraid it doesn't make any sense. But I think the use-one-key answer obviates that anyway.
posted by intermod at 8:03 PM on May 28, 2006

My previous laptop which had an 802.11b card would be able to see but not join 802.11g networks that were not set to be backwards compatible. Maybe this is part of what is happening to you?
posted by john m at 8:15 PM on May 28, 2006

Give us more detail about the hardware you're dealing with. Maybe you have a flaky 802.11 card. (just like my Dell laptop. It does what you describe all the time.)
posted by drstein at 8:18 PM on May 28, 2006

For some reason, every time I reboot (or lose the wireless connection), I have to re-input the WEP key. I keep it in my password manager program and just copy-paste.

It has something to do with the drivers I think... the people at protonic.com (free tech support site which I am not affiliated with) had me update my drivers and that fixed it - it remembered the password.

However, I have since reinstalled XP and when I tried to do the same thing again, it didn't work - I'm back to re-inputting the key each time I reboot.
posted by IndigoRain at 9:01 PM on May 28, 2006

My laptop (Thinkpad with XP Pro) will frequently refuse to connect to my WAP, despite the fact that the WAP isn't more than ten feet away. I, too, get a good connection, but end up with the "Limited or No Connectivity" message. I'm not sure what the root cause is, I usually just reboot, or just move close enough to use a wired connection. I can connect to my neighbor's (unencrypted) AP fine, but not my own. Only happens sporadically, though.

I'd put my money on interference. A friend and I once spent at least an hour debugging intermittent wireless problems for one of his clients, before we finally changed the channel on the WAP, and all the problems disappeared. With microwave ovens and many cordless phones on 2.4 GHz, it's little surprise you'll run into interference. But it's just a guess that this is your problem. I'm yet to try changing the channel mine uses.
posted by fogster at 10:00 PM on May 28, 2006

"Limited or no connectivity" typically means it can't get a DHCP lease for some reason. So, it could be a number of things from interference to a problem with the DHCP server on your wireless router/access point. It's odd that you'd have this problem on all your networks at once. If you're trying to connect to a network that's not yours, perhaps your MAC address is blocked (or they're only letting on approved MACs), or perhaps they have their DHCP server turned off entirely and are using static addresses.
posted by kindall at 10:37 PM on May 28, 2006

I put my vote in for all of these, with fogster's suggestion being one of those curve balls to watch out for. In my experience, weak/poor signal is the #1 reason, closely followed by b/g compatibility issues.

Then comes interference - it's quite common in these cases to have 90%+ signal, be able to see the AP name, etc, but be unable to connect even when sitting right beside it. 2.4GHz video senders, wireless burglar alarms, etc are the things to watch out for here - they're transmitting all the time, whereas cordless phones, microwave ovens, and the like only cause intermittent problems.

As for the second part of your question - I'm guessing you're referring to having only 4 slots for WEP keys* in the config page of your AP/router? If that's the case, just do what everybody else does - share the same key amongst all users. If you have reasons for having a different encryption key for yourself, let your housemates share one key and use a second for yourself. All users sharing the same key is pretty standard practice.

(* This is the case for most higher-end APs, and I think Apple AirPorts. Most other APs show only one on their config page, but often can often be configured for up to 4 via config scripts or CLI.)
posted by Pinback at 6:47 AM on May 29, 2006