Wireless router

[Santos]

Already have (Eircom) broadband but now want to go wireless. All I need is to be able to connect the laptop to corporate VPN over the wireless connection and that's about it i.e. no shared printers etc.

Any features in particular I should look out for before trawling eBay?

[Justin]

I bought a linksys one which works fine, but I had to put in a Linksys extender/signal booster before it would work throughout the house. bear that in mind if range is important or you have thick walls - e.g. anything not of modern aeroblock construction.

[DMZ]

Don't waste time on eBay for starters. You can buy that kit on Amazon. Anything by Linksys, Netgear, or D-Link is fine. Everything will do IPsec pass-through etc.

[fizzy]

Don't waste time on eBay for starters. You can buy that kit on Amazon. Anything by Linksys, Netgear, or D-Link is fine. Everything will do IPsec pass-through etc.

Except the Eircom Netopia box.. ;)

[Santos]

Please don't make me go to boards.ie, hopefully somebody here can help.

Bought a Linksys (WKG54 or something) wireless router and am trying to get it to talk to my Eircom Netopia modem. Not a chance. Nothing stirring. I haven't even tried the wireless side of things just the cat5 cable from PC-Router-Modem at the moment but no internet. PC gets an IP from the router, the Internet light is on, Router IP = 192.168.1.1 and Modem IP = 192.168.1.254.

Eircom BB is PPPoE right? Do I have to supply much in the line of router config for that outside of a Primary & Secondary DNS and a uname/pword? I should hardly have to go fiddling with MAC addresses etc. Any pointers?

[fizzy]

The basic settings are:

Encapsulation: PPPoE
Multiplexing: LLC Based
VPI: 8
VCI: 35

The last 2 are more than likely different on any Linksys stuff..

[DMZ]

What is the exact model of your router, please?

[Santos]

Its a Linksys WKPC54G...still not routing.

[DMZ]

Ok, you have a bog-standard router. The simplest thing to do is to set it up to do DHCP against the ADSL modem. When you open up http://192.168.1.1 on a web browser and login, you should see the basic setup page of the router/ Somewhere, probably at the top of the page, you'll see drop-down that includes the option "Automatic Configuration - DHCP". Select that.

If that's already selected and it doesn't work, on the router go to the "Status" page and see what it says about IP address. It should probably say 192.168.1.2 or something and the default gateway is probably 192.168.1.1. This means that the router has picked up the settings of the modem, which is also using the 192.168.1.x network. This is not a problem.

It's possible that the problem has to do with DNS. You can try on the router to set the DNS to be 192.168.1.1. That will point the DNS to the modem which in turn should have picked up the settings from Eircom. If that doesn't work, you can find Eircom's DNS settings on eircom.net's broadband support pages and you can punch them into the router.

[Santos]

Thanks for the help DMZ, unfortunately I've tried all that and no luck. The router is getting an IP (192.168.1.2) from the Modem. Its setting the default gateway to the Modem's IP (192.168.1.254) which looks OK. Its also setting the primary DNS to 192.168.1.254...dunno if that's supposed to happen or not.

Tried putting in the Eircom DNS settings as well but no luck. Maybe its a laptop setting but all I have on this is Obtain IP automatically. Totally stuck. Plan to try it in a different PC tomorrow.

Firmware Version: 1.56.01, Jul 22 2004
Current Time: Not Available
MAC Address: 00-06-5B-BB-16-A6

Login Type: DHCP
Internet IP Address: 192.168.1.2
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.1.254
DNS 1: 192.168.1.254
DNS 2: 0.0.0.0
DNS 3: 0.0.0.0
MTU: 1500

[DMZ]

You can ping the router from the laptop I hope? Like ping 192.168.1.1?

Can you ping 82.195.136.36? (that's boards.ie...) Just making sure you have internet connectivity through the router and that it is indeed a DNS problem.

You should have Obtain IP address automatically and Obtain DNS server address automatically on the laptop, which you probably do.

Try rebooting the laptop if you haven't already. If that doesn't help, punch in the Eircom DNS settings on the laptop.

[Santos]

That's the thing, I don't have internet connectivity through the router (can't ping any external IPs). The internet light on the router is on but if I try a ping or access a web page the "DSL traffic" light on the modem shows no activity. Tried the Eircom settings to no avail. Thanks again for the help.

[DMZ]

You can ping the router from the laptop I presume?

What's not ideal for troubleshooting purposes is that both the modem and the router are using the 192.168.1.x network. I would suggest that you change the router to serve out 192.168.2.x instead. On that setup page you should be able to set this up easily. Once you've done this, you can now ping the modem (192.168.1.254) from the laptop through the router. You will need to disable and enable the network connection on the laptop once you've changed the LAN IP address on the router.

[Santos]

Yeah, no problem with the ping or connecting to the routers setup. Can also ping and connect to Modem via the browser.

Will try change the Routers IP tonight and see if that helps. Ta.

[Santos]

Bingo! Changed the Router IP to 192.168.2.1 and it worked perfectly. Thanks for the help, I appreciate it.