In WiFi Hell

August 6, 2006 9:18 PM

Please help me with installing my home WiFi connection.

I have a PC desktop and a new MacBook. When I turned on my laptop the first time, kaboom! I had internet access! Too bad it was my neighbor's unsecured internet access. Oops.

So tonight I was trying to install a Microsoft MN-700 WiFi base. My desktop would not recognize my internet connection. It recognized my modem (external DSL ethernet) and I could access internet on the PC. But no matter what I did, the WiFi said I had no internet connection. I called my ISP's tech support and set it up via PPoE. Still, no internet.

My laptop sees the WiFi I set up, but when I try to access it, it won't recognize the password I installed.

What gives?

posted by miltoncat to Technology (5 answers total)

I assume your desktop is plugged directly into the wi-fi router? If that's the case, get rid of the password on the router and see if you can connect.
posted by empath at 9:25 PM on August 6, 2006

I had a very similar problem a few weeks ago. After checking firewalls and the like I isolated the problem to my modem - which was a few years old (D-link dsl-302g) and seemed to have a problem communucating with the router.

As i needed to update my modem anyway (for ADSL2+), this was no major issue. I set everything up as before with the new modem and the WI-FI worked perfectly straight away. Looking I back I think it had something to do with the modem not being uPnP compatible. There is probably a more technical answer out there - but this worked for me
posted by TheOtherGuy at 9:25 PM on August 6, 2006

My experience with the router you are using has been one of trying to add too much security - it doesn't seem to do wpa very well but works fine with WEP
Can you log in to the modem itself from your desktop?
posted by ptm at 10:00 PM on August 6, 2006

Oh, and the other thing i've found at least working with comcast is that you need to clone the mac address.
posted by ptm at 10:01 PM on August 6, 2006

Hey there. You need to configure your router properly.

Your router also needs to know those DSL settings.

call your ISP and find out what your username and password are.

then plug your laptop into a ethernet cable and plug it into one of the 1-2-3-4 plugs on the back of your Linksys.

Then open a web browser and type this:

192.168.1.1 (or whatever the address is)

and when it asks for a user name and password, use the password admin -- leave the user name blank.

and you'll see a page that is the "guts" of your router. you'll need to input your ISP (DSL company)'s username and password and possibly some other information -- ask the person on the phone of your ISP for that sort of thing. (Although a lot of this info should be on your main PC as well... I'm going to assume that you have a PC.

Go to start > settings > control panel > network

right click on local area connection and select properties... then click on TCP/IP and click properties. then you'll see some manually inputted information. take all of that information from that page and input them into the similarly named things on your laptop with the "guts" page open.)

okay, back to your router... while you're in there, please secure your wireless connection by clicking on wireless, then security, and setting a password on your router. Your router manual can tell you how to do this.

once you have set this all up happily, you can now test that your laptop is able to connect to the wireless signal and get on the internet.

Restart everything at this point - your laptop, the router, the DSL modem.

happy now?

good luck.
posted by k8t at 3:58 AM on August 7, 2006