Computer and home networking gurus, I need some help with what I feel should be a simple problem.
I’ve got a Time Warner Cable supplied Arris cable modem, router, wifi combo device that, frankly, is a piece of junk. Unfortunately due to some idiotic wiring when my house was built less than a year ago, I can’t just put the thing into bridge mode and get a better wifi router. The chuckleheads who wired the house pulled two Ethernet cables from my home office into an closure with the incoming cable line but pulled every other Ethernet line in the house to the other side of the closet. So right now I have the two office lines connected directly to the router and a jumper that goes to a switch on the other side of the closet for everything else. The problem is that the wireless is crappy, drops frequently and has mediocre range. Some of these problems are probably due to being in a closet. So ideally I’d like to just turn the wireless functions off on the Arris device and use my old Netgear N600 as an access point.
But here’s my problem… I can’t figure out for the life of me how to log in to the Netgear device to change it in to AP mode! I’ve tried connecting the Netgear directly to my desktop, but it doesn’t recognize the usual login IP address.
While plugging the Netgear directly to your desktop, make sure you plug into one of the LAN ports, NOT the WAN port. Then try connecting to 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254
You can’t assume the Netgear will have the "Usual’ IP address, because there’s no such thing. It could have an IP that starts with 10, or one that starts with 192. It could even be that its default IP conflicts with the IP of your cable modem. If your desktop is connected directly to it and has received a valid IP, look and see what its gateway is. That will be the IP of the Netgear. You might need to do this with the cable modem turned off in case there is an IP conflict.
I tried that after I posted and I got in once, but once I tried to change the settings it wouldn’t connect again.
Sorry, I meant ‘usual’ in the sense of the IP address I have always used to connect to it before. Maybe there is a conflict. I had diabled the wifi adapter on the desktop so it wasn’t connected to the router, but maybe I just need to turn the router off to be sure.
The desktop seems to freak out when it detects the Netgear router but then notices it isn’t connected to the Internet too.
I’m half asleep so forgive me if I’ve gotten this wrong, but are you just looking for the current IP address of the router? If you go to a command prompt and enter IPCONFIG, does it show up under Gateway?
No, right now the Netgear is unused because the device from TWC is a modem, router, wifi combo thing. I’m trying to figure out how to access the Netgear when it isn’t a part of the network. Conversely, can I just attack the Netgear to the network as is? I don’t think so because then there would be two routers.
I also tried putting the TWC device into bridge mode temporarily to gain access to Netgear but that was an unmitigated disaster. Nothing worked at that point so I had to reset everything to factory settings and redo my whole wifi SSID name and password etc.
What you need to do is plug your PC directly into the Netgear, with the Netgear NOT connected to the Arris. This is in case both are trying to use the same default IP address. Your Netgear router should have three default ranges - 10/8, 192.168/16, and 172.16/12. If you can, select that last one. Failing that, manually change the IP range to 172.16/12. This is so that the IP addresses are immediately and obviously different. Make sure DHCP is left on. Set up Wifi etc.
Leave the Arris set up as a router and DHCP server but Wifi OFF. Now connect the WAN port of your Netgear to a LAN port of the Arris and the Netgear will get an IP address from the Arris and you should be able to connect through to the internet. Once you’ve got that done, then you can look into simplifying, access points, et al.
Did you change any IP settings on the NetGear device, like its IP address/subnet, or disable DHCP if it was enabled? And is your desktop configured to use a dynamic IP address on that network interface?
If you’re using a dynamic IP address on the desktop then DHCP needs to be enabled on the NetGear unit. If you’re using a static IP address/subnet on the desktop and you have changed the address of the NetGear unit, then you need to change the config on the desktop to match.
10.0.0.0 /8 (255.0.0.0) (Very unlikely as this gives you roughly 65 million IP addresses)
172.16.0 /16 (255.255.0.0 (Also very unlikely as this gives you a crap load of IP addresses as well)
192.168.0.0 /24 (255.255.255.0) Most likely, though the third octet may be 1 instead of 0 for 192.168.1.0. This gives you 252 IP addresses.
If the Netgear is 192.168.1.0 /24 plug the Netgear directly into your PC (note, some older models may require a cross over network cable, though this is unlikely)
Give your PC the IP address 192.168.1.2 mask 255.255.255.0