Les H

Nerver in all the time I have owned a PC have I felt more like taking a sledghammer to it. I invested in a D-Link cable router last week together with a wireless network card and a wireless cardbus adapter for the laptop. Basically I have spent most of the last 3 days trying to get the bloody things to work. I have had it all working OK for short periods of time but it just seems to give up the ghost without warning and start working again when it feels like it.
I am not complete **** when it comes to computers but the whole thing is completely beyond me. I thought this crap wwas supposed to work straight out of the box. It has now packed up alltogether although all the indications on the display say it is working OK.I do not have a wireless connection at all!!

Anybody got any ideas before I smash the whole lot to pieces?. Could I have just been unlucky enough to get a duff one

Les H

carl

Probably not got enough signal at the client end. You have to be very careful with the antenna positioning. Try thinking about the shape of the radiation pattern from the antennae, and position those at the AP and those at the client accordingly. With a dipole (which is what you have), basically most of the signal comes out perpendicular to the rod and very little out of the ends. Also remember that the DLink APs transmit from the left antenna, but receive from both (diversity).

Mine works fine, but there's really not enough signal at one of the client PCs. It really needs to be the other way round, because at the moment the PC chassis sits between the antenna and the AP.

Positioning the AP as near as you can to the centre of the house is a good start. Unfortunately in my case there's an oven and microwave between the AP and everything else

Another thought -- is there anyone else in your street with a wireless LAN (you can do a 'site survey' from one of the client PC's 'Dlink Tools' icon)? If so, you may be getting interference when they're using their LAN and not at other times. Set your LAN to run on a channel as far away from their's as possible (e.g. if they're using channel 6, try using channel 1 or channel 13 -- there's a lot of overlap between adjacent channels).

[Edited by carl - 3/18/2003 10:07:55 PM]

Mr.Cookie

are you using an encryption i couldn't get this to work with mine (a belkin router) so ended up just setting it upto allow 3 mac addys (desktop, laptop, and pvr) also try running a loopback ping from machine (open up a dos prompt window, on xp click start-> run type cmd ->okay) then type ping 127.0.0.1 dont know what this does but it has worked for me, and also unplug modem router and switch of pc's wait about 2 minutes then turn on modem give it a minute to configure then turn on router then pc's

Si
Ps i know bollox all about pc but this stuff has worked for me

carl

If all else fails, you could always invest in this:
http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/threa...hreadID=189112

Les H

Thanks for your input Guys, I actually have the router right on top of my PC at the moment and the signal stength is good, anyway they quote upto 100M range on the box. If it wont work from one side of the room to the other then its going straight back. I'm gonna try some of the things suggested but I cant help feeling its faulty, surely its got to work when its only about a foot away.

carl

Is the signal strength good?

First thing to do is turn off all the MAC filters and WEP and see if you can get it connected.

One thing I discovered was that not only do you have to get the WEP keys the same on the client and AP, but they have to be in the same position (i.e. if it's key 1 on the AP it has to be key 1 on the client). Fck knows why

Hanslow

Have you got a firewall installed on your PCs? If so, what have you got the local/trusted zone security set to? If it is set to High (on Zone Alarm anyway), it will stop any LAN traffic. It will need to be set to medium or less.

Buggered me up for a while until I realised

MattW

What model Les - Is it the 614. If it is I have one, happy to talk you through set up if you need it.

Les H

Hanslow
Bingo! You are a star sir, I am indeed using zone alarm and now remember that when I finished messing around with it last night I set it to high. As soon as I changed this to medium, it has started working OK. The jury is still out however because of the intermittant signal loss problem but at least there is progress.

MattW
Yes it is the 614,I may take you up on that mate if this problem persists, it was dropping the signal all weekend and the more I think about it, it was showing a very weak reception but I only had it at the other end of the room about 20 feet away, under the telly in fact.

Les H

Hanslow

Nice one At least you are over the first hurdle

Good luck with tweaking it now

MattW

Les - No probs. FYI mine is behind my tv and i get a signal of approx 70-80%

carl

If you've got the 614 (router+firewall) you may as well uninstall Zonealarm.

babber

Un-install the firewall (zonealarm) I wouldn't do that mate. Make sure you allow the IP range for the LAN (192.168.0.x) to talk to each other. With Zonealarm you need to click on the firewall tab and then Zones. Add the IP range 192.168.0.1 to say 192.168.0.11 to allow ten PC to share the connections. You will need to do this on all the attached PCs. Set the trusted site security to medium and everything should work.

My RP114P (netgear) router apparently has a firewall, but I wouldn't trust it to be really honest, and like using zonealarm as a backup

Cheers Phill

Hanslow

I'm the same as babber. I have the netgear FR114P and the firewall has so far blocked any access to my PCs, as Zone Alarm has not picked anything up at all. It almost seems redundant....but I'm paranoid so it's staying on.

Of course, it's only blocked the things I know about!! <paranoid mode off!>

babber

I know of someone that has a router with so say firewall included and they got hacked. They played around with the router and it wouldn't allow them access after. I had to over-write the rom to get it going again

I like Zonealarm as I can lock the PC, etc and see if anything requests access to the internet, etc.

Cheers Phill C

[Edited by babber - 19/03/2003 11:06:06]

angrynorth

I have signal problems with my laptop card too, only happens after about an hour or so, worked it down to being the PCMIA card getting far too hot, so after an hour or so (or as soon as the signal goes) shut the laptop down for 5 mins and pull the card out of the slot to let it cool down a little. After that its fine again for another hour.

Note to self, next time buy external USB card!

carl

I found that the DLink Cardbus card operating in 'Power Save' mode was next to useless. Changed it to 'continuous access' (usually have the laptop plugged into the mains anyway) and it's fine.

LordLuthor

remember, wireless network is 100-200m line of site, 0m through lead and about 10m through 1-skin breeze-block. It is essentially ****e, and really only useful when you pla an entire building layout with a site survey and make sure you test all the nooks and crannies. This is what we did in our factory. AP's everywhere.

50mx30m factory partitioned into 1 freezer, offices and 2 other storage rooms and we used 5 Cisco 1200's with roof mount antennas. That works well! But in the home, you go into anohter room, and chances are you will lose the signal completely, it is possible!

Anyway, god luck. Like they said, remove all filters, security etc, etc. If in doubt, RMA it and get another one..

gl mate!