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Wireless Router Woes

Dark HelmetDark Helmet Registered User regular
Hey all, I need help with a wireless router problem I have and I am hoping someone here can assist me with finding out what I am doing wrong.

I have a D-Link wireless router I am trying to set up in my apartment for my girlfriend and I and it is refusing to cooperate. I have road-runner internet and from my modem to my computer it is fine. When I reroute my connection through the router my computer can no longer detect the internet.

I have installed the software that came with the router, and followed all of its steps up until the point it failed to detect an internet connection.

A note: nearly a year ago I had a linksys wireless router and it worked fine. I was actually shocked it was so easy to get it set-up. Sporadically it would misbehave and drop my internet connection, but cycling the power on the router worked 90% of the time, the few times it didn't I usually had to reboot my computer too. About 5 months ago it did it again, but nothing I could do would get it to reconnect the internet connection. I eventually gave up on it and figured it was the router just being a piece of junk. But now all these months later I have a different wireless router and it is having the exact same problem. Now I am worrying it might be some sort of problem on my computer's side.

The router lights are all active for the cables they are plugged into. I have even swapped out cables in hopes that it might be a faulty cable - no luck.

Any advice? Any more information I might need to provide?

warrioricon4.pngrogueicon1.pngpaladinicon1.pnghuntericon2.png

And my poor Death Knight that couldn't afford an icon.
Dark Helmet on

Posts

  • Dark HelmetDark Helmet Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    Disregard, I got it to work! Woke up this morning and just scoured the internet for a couple hours trying various things and finally got a good tip.

    Turns out my ISP has MAC-authentication to prevent unauthorized access to their service. The router has a different MAC address than my computer so it was being denied access to the internet. 'Clone MAC' option on the router allowed my router to use my computer's MAC instead, and now it is happy.

    Dark Helmet on
    warrioricon4.pngrogueicon1.pngpaladinicon1.pnghuntericon2.png

    And my poor Death Knight that couldn't afford an icon.
  • Evil_ReaverEvil_Reaver Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    I have Road Runner as well and I haven't heard anything about MAC address authentication on their network. I realize that not all Road Runner networks are the same, so my SoCal Road Runner network may very well be different from yours, but a cable company using MAC authentication is just flat out weird.

    Road Runner may have logged your computer's MAC address, in which case, all you have to do is unplug the power to your modem for 5-10 minutes to clear their log. Once you do that, you can plug your router in to the modem and everything should be gravy. I had to do this very thing a few weeks ago when I swapped out routers on my own LAN.

    Evil_Reaver on
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  • Dark HelmetDark Helmet Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    I am having trouble finding the web-page I got the information on, so I will just try and recap what I gathered from it. If my understanding is correct, when you get internet service established some local ISPs have been known to register your computer's MAC address to the IP provided. Does that make sense? I'm not sure how that would work out if you have DHCP, it isn't like my computer has one permanent IP. Anyhow, router has a different MAC, and it apparently pissed off my provider. I cloned the MAC address from my comp to the router - and I was up and online almost immediately.

    You might be right though. Allwells, problem is solved - and that's all I really care about.

    Dark Helmet on
    warrioricon4.pngrogueicon1.pngpaladinicon1.pnghuntericon2.png

    And my poor Death Knight that couldn't afford an icon.
  • DeusfauxDeusfaux Registered User regular
    edited April 2008
    both major ISPs did or still do use MAC authentication.

    one of them for a time had an online manager where you could have 2 different MACs you could edit to have allowed on the network

    the other just needed the modem off for 5 hours or something to change to a single new one.


    Actually now that I think about it, the latter doesnt do that anymore and you can just plug in and go.

    Deusfaux on
  • DixonDixon Screwed...possibly doomed CanadaRegistered User regular
    edited April 2008
    I have the same propblem with my provider which is Cogeco Cable. They only allow 3 unique macs and ip addresses so the clone mac address works nice and a proxy helps with the ip

    Dixon on
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