Wired connection through a wireless router?

So we had a wireless connection here with two computers. My father, in trying to set up a new printer and connect it to the network, did SOMETHING (unknown) which basically nuked said network, and neither of us are savvy enough to fix it. From past experience trying to set up this network, I’m confident that this is a complicated, non-standard problem, and I won’t trouble anyone here to help with it.

However, while we try to figure that out, I thought that in the interim we could just run a wired connection to the second computer. My computer has access through the landline (wall -> modem -> router -> computer), so I assumed that I could run a second ethernet cable from the router to my father’s computer, but it turns out that maybe I don’t know how to do that either. I enabled the LAN connection, it claims to be connected, and it is sending and receiving packets, but only in minuscule amounts (up to a few hundred, instead of hundreds of thousands). Could anyone point me to a simple set-up guide? Something really obvious I’m forgetting? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The simplest thing to try is to simply reset your router. Depending on the brand there should be a tiny hole in the back of your router with the word RESET next to it. You’ll need a straightened-out paper clip to press the reset button inside. Do this with the router plugged in and turned on. Give it a few moments and you should be able to at least establish a wired connection to the internet thru it.

If you’re feeling adventurous you could try and fix and/or reset it thru its software interface. With a PC that’s plugged into the router open Internet Explorer, ignore all its complaining about the bad things that are going on with its online connection etc., click on the address bar and type 192.168.0.1 and hit enter (no spaces, no www, no http, nothing but those digits and periods in between!) This should open the routers built-in web interface (sometimes its 192.168.0.0 or 192.168.0.010 so try them if necessary). Note that if you do get this to work but the router asks for a sign-on and you don’t know it, you will have to reset it as per above!

Good luck, and keep posting…

Thanks for the advice, but I’m afraid that I already did a complete reset of the router in the process of trying to repair the wireless connection*. I’ve also been mucking around with the router’s setup page (192.168.1.1 for me), but I don’t really know what I’m doing, so my efforts are pretty much limited to toggling various settings that are potentially relevant. And there’s been some Google-scouring, plugging in solutions given for various similar problems that others have complained about.

  • –> No dice; tried just creating a new network from scratch with Linksys’ network setup program, but first it would tell me that it couldn’t do it because I wasn’t connected to the internet (even though I was), and then later it would apparently recognize that I had a connection, but it couldn’t detect the router. These are (some of) the types of problems I had setting up the network in the first place, and it was only accomplished back then because of a four hour phone call to India. Now the router is out of warranty so that’s not an option this time unless I want to pay them $30 for the privilege, and that just fucking galls, besides which at that price it makes more sense to just buy a new (cheap) router that would come with a year or two of free tech support ($30 buys me two weeks).

Sorry for ranting; it’s just been a very frustrating problem.

Oh rant away!

I’ve been into computers since the early 80s (first one a Radio Shack TRS-80!) so of course I’m the go-to-guy for any kinds of PC problems with family, friends, friends of friends etc. And I HATE wireless networks! They have gotten better, but basically you are still trying to make a computer work via a fucking radio! Roger, Over, Unger!?

Add to that of course that its all also encrypted (Oger-Ray, Over-ay, Unger-ay!) and, well, you get the idea!

Rather than just try here I’d check and see if Linksys has a forum, may have better luck there.

And just to clarify, you’re using an external Linksys router, right? Not an internal wireless card? I’ve never used a Linksys (I have a D-Link) but as far as I know there shouldn’t be any router software of any kind what-so-ever on the PC itself! The router should be transparent to it.

Right, external router. Linksys WRT54G.

My guess would be that your father’s computer is set up with a static IP. Make it dynamic. And make sure your router has DHCP turned on.

My second guess would be a bad cable. The third would be that whatever your father did actually messed up the settings on his computer–like when he tried to install the drivers or something.

Are you using some really exotic hardware?
If you reset both router and pc network settings it should be a 10 min job.

Edited to add: off course you should also update any drivers.

This is a big clue. Misconfiguration of the router or the network settings will result in exactly zero packets. The most likely answer is a bad cable. However I have been bitten by all sorts of evil issues, including bent fingers in the RJ45 sockets (the sockets for the network cable), corroded connectors (or just plain dirty) and also broken network hardware. The usual diagnostic is to swap each and every component until something works.

One of the two edged aspects of IP over Ethernet is that Ethernet is allowed to drop packets, so the protocols will simply keep trying until a packet gets through. In the face of bad hardware issues you get a working network that performs anything from poorly to abysmally. You could see whether the network interface stats are showing lots of errors. That could also be a clue.

Thanks, I’ll check on that the next chance I get.

Exactly what steps would I take to reset the pc’s network settings?

Aside from the fact that the cable is brand new, what causes me to doubt this is that connecting my father’s computer through the router *wirelessly *results in the same thing: apparently connected, but tiny numbers of packets and zero functionality. Conversely, if I disable the landline on my computer and only connect to the router wirelessly, an appropriate volume of packets are being sent and received, but I have no internet capability.
Again, thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to help out.

Another possibility: The 2nd computer is giving priority to the wireless network adapter which, of course, isn’t working properly. Make sure you’ve disabled the wireless adapter.

I ran into this problem last winter when I was trying to diagnose wildly erratic download speeds over my wired LAN connection. Once I disabled the wireless adapter, my bandwidth issues were completely resolved.

I believe you’re at the point where dad is supposed to say “Oh well, I wanted to buy a new router anyway”.

(sorry I have nothing else to offer. I have 2 wired connections coming off my wireless and haven’t experienced any problems that unplugging the whole shebang hasn’t fixed)

In a sane world, plugging directly into the router should simply work without having to do anything else. Try connecting directly to the modem and bypassing the router temporarily. If you get good speed, then you know the cable is good and the problem is between the router/computer.

I have had connection problems on and off over the years. I have drug the Bright House technicians out several times. They plug their laptop into the cable, connect, and announce there is nothing wrong with the connection, and it is in my equipment. I connect, reconnect, move cables, etc. and finally get things working. I have concluded it is dirty contacts. I would keep messing with the cables. Note, I usually get either get a good connection, or none at all.

I have a Motorola SB4100 cable modem wired to a Belkin wireless router with 4 wired ports. This computer and my VOIP adapter are connected directly to the router. I have another cable running from it to a hub with 2 other computers connected to it. I have a notebook that connects wirelessly. My son in law gave me the wireless router so they can connect their laptops when they visit.

To make sure you’re not getting screwed by some obscure network setting you can ‘reset’ them by going to ‘network connections’ and create a new connection and disable all others.

We often have a similar symptom (intermittent) where it says it’s connected but with limited functionality, you have to dig in a bit to see that it couldn’t assign an IP address.

The fix that works for my setup is to turn off the PC’s, unplug the router for a few minutes, plug it back in, wait until it is completely ready to go, then fire up the PC’s.

But, I will say that any directly connected PC’s have never had this symptom, only the ones connected via wireless, so it may not be related.

So I tried connecting my father’s computer directly to the modem. The result was, instead of being apparently connected but both sending and receiving a tiny number of packets, the computer sent a tiny number of packets, and received none; “Limited or no internet connectivity,” Windows managed to tell me.

I also tried cleaning all the cable contacts – no luck.

Is your ISP Time Warner?

They don’t want you to use a router (unless you rent it from them).

Several months ago, my connection quit working through my WRT54G. TW tech “support” insisted that the problem was my router (they could Identify it as a Linksys device by MAC).

After some experimentation, I verified that the modem was configured somehow to only provide a connection to one specific MAC address.

Cloned that MAC to the router and everything was fine.

I can’t give much Windows advice except reboot it every time you change something. It shouldn’t be necessary but I had to do it when trying to get my daughter’s online.

Does he have a firewall? When I finally got her’s online, the firewall asked whether I wanted to allow it to connect. Well, it asked intermittently. When it didn’t ask, it had to be rebooted and hopefully would ask the next time. Then without changing anything, it just decided to work perfectly for no reason whatsoever. It was ridiculous.

Anyway, now we know it’s not the router. If your computer works when plugged into the modem (I think that’s what you said but I’m not clear) then it’s dad’s comp and not the modem. If yours doesn’t work when wired, it could be the modem. If it’s cable, you can call them and they can tell you if the signal is going through.

I wanted to come back and mention how my problem was (just now) fixed, just in case anybody was curious.

I spent most of the day (and some of last night) on and off the phone with India. Surprisingly, our ISP (Verizon) was perfectly willing to give customer support even though the problem was, obviously, entirely on our end. So, good on them. What we wound up doing was simply going to the modem’s setup page and creating a new connection (which got the wired setup working), and then going to the router’s setup page and changing the local IP address from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.2.1, which enabled the wireless connection.

Total time between problem’s inception and resolution: 5.25 Days.
Total time spent actually on the phone with Verizon: 4.5 Hours.
Total time required to implement eventual solution: 6 Minutes (including reboot).
Thanks to everyone who took the time help.

IP is allowed to drop packets, too. You have to go up a layer to TCP before you get reliability.