e mare libertas
After ten years of saying that, I decided to become a bicycle courier.Originally Posted by RantyDave
I'm glad I'm just a simple bicycle courier. If I was a software engineer with any experience in cryptosystems, I might be tempted to call you an idiot.
kiwibiker is full of love, an disrespect.
- mikey
Forum whore
OMG.
Look guys, I had limited success last night. I don't think the router is the issue, I think the laptop is the problematic partner. I have a way for testing that by sticking a wireless dongle on Mr Hitcher's PC and seeing how that behaves.
Just so I meet with the approval of you home networking geniuses.
Assumptions:
Dlink router at least 50% OK. Physical connection from Mr Hitcher's PC functions perfectly with no random drop outs.
Old house may have lead insulation in walls. Move laptop to same room as router to remove that variable.
Trouble shooting steps I undertook:
1. Confirmed that we were talking cable modem to Wireless router with 4 port ethernet switch. Only one device providing DHCP on Mr Hitcher's network. Confirmed.
2. Reset wireless adapter on Laptop - Adapter was switched on but wireless adapter indicator was off and the adapter showed as powered off in Device Manager. The IBM config tool also showed the adapter as off. Got that going.
3. Browsed for wireless networks. Only work 50% of the time. Rebooted laptop with wireless adapter powered up.
4. Check router config while laptop rebooted. Went through various filtering options, DHCP settings, Static WAN IP config, wirelss mode and encryption type, and made sure encryption key was known and configured correctly. DHCP scope well separated from physical interface address. No conflicts. Pre-shared key correct on laptop and router. However a bit too many "auto detect" options turned on (802.11b, g, and n auto detection; WPA/WPA2 auto detection) for my personal comfort. Set to WPA only, and 802.11b/g, and TKID cypher.
5. Laptop only detecting wireless networks 50% of the time. Plugged laptop Nic into router. Works like a charm, router registers new DHCP client and shows log entry for new DHCP client..
6. Ask Mr Hitcher if he has performed a power reset on router. He hasn't so I repower router. Wireless detection performance improves for laptop to about 75%. Still complaining about low power signal despite the twin aerials on the Dlink box growing a pre-cancerous lesion on my knee in the hour or so we've been sitting next to it.
7. Take opportunity to update laptop drivers while connected physically to router. No wireless adapter updates available for the laptop.
8. Document router config and hold reset button in for 10 seconds. Reconfig router to Mr Hitcher's requirements. Leave encryption off and use open, unsecured wireless network. Still no go (see where this is going?).
9. Turn off broadcast SSID, manually configure wireless adapter on laptop. Still no go.
10. Turn on broadcast SSID. Turn on WPA, generate 64 character key, configure laptop adapter manually at hardware driver level rather than vista interface. Success. Browse Stuff.
11. Grin wildly, put laptop on charge, move it from one side of room to other and wireless link drops, never to recover.
12. Go home (Thank you for the lift Mr Hitcher).
13. Next plan - test functionality of wireless router by using my own, known good (I'm using it right now) NetComm NP644 USB 802.11b/g dongle on Mr Hitcher's XP Desktop with the physical NIC disconnected from the router. If it works, back the laptop up, rebuild from scratch test again. If not, unplug Dlink Router and hurl it from Mr Hitcher's office window into the primeval wasteland of the Ngaio Gorge.
Is that OK with you guys?
If a man is alone in the woods and there isn't a woke Hollywood around to call him racist, is he still white?
needs to work harder
Oh my god. What ... the ... fuck ....
Yeah, what gives with your bike???
Dave
Signature needed. Apply within.
Forum whore
Indeed.
Still waiting for parts.
If a man is alone in the woods and there isn't a woke Hollywood around to call him racist, is he still white?
Hardcore Biker
So it says couldn´t connect to wireless network, or wireless network has no activity and you get given some funky IP?
I love the smell of twin V16's in the morning..
Forum whore
There's no issue with anything "funky" in the address space at all. As I said, I reduced the config to basic, simple, unecrypted manually configured connectivity, addressing, and encryption (turned off) to remove the auto config features of the router as being an issue.
The laptop WLAN adapter is either broken or the spastically implemented driver suite is causing the problem. I personally think that is the issue. The laptop needs a refresh and I will make sure that driver complexity is removed from the mix.
In the meantime the dongle test is to make sure the WiFi part of the Dlink box is working fine by using known good hardware. If it works on the PC and the laptop then it will be the WLAN adapter/driver on the laptop at fault.
If a man is alone in the woods and there isn't a woke Hollywood around to call him racist, is he still white?
Hardcore Biker
I had a wierd problem in the past with a WAP not passing through DHCP on the wireless - wired connection was OK. PC was given a strange IP address not from the DHCP server.
I love the smell of twin V16's in the morning..
Forum whore
The strange address isn't a strange address at all, it is simply the default DHCP address assigned when the PC can't contact a DHCP server.
DHCP is working for the WLAN adapter on the laptop, but only when the adapter decides it can see a wireless network.
If a man is alone in the woods and there isn't a woke Hollywood around to call him racist, is he still white?
Easily ammused
I might be able to pop round tonight, and then we can all stand and stare at it together.
Some things are worth dying for, living is one of them.
Forum whore
Oh for love of Ged. Tell him to plug the bloody thing in via an ethernet cable and I'll sort it remotely. Genuine offer...he can PM me if he wants my phone number.
I've found some of the older 802.11g cards don't connect and sometimes cause the dreaded blue screen of death when connecting to 802.11n type routers.
I blame the gits in whitewear/furniture shops who sell joe public wifi kit with comments like "oh just plug it in, put the CD in and it'll all work automagically".
Forum whore
Thanks dude. I'll remember that. Why don't you just come out and say I have no idea? I've just said, repeatedly that the issue is most likely not the router, but the laptop WiFi hardware driver implementation. I did get it to work briefly, but I didn't have time to finish sorting the drivers.
I also did mention that I took the route of reducing the likely conflicts to nil by manually avoiding the the auto config options that select channels, 802.11x version, and cypher version by configuring it all manually, hence my belief that either the WiFI hardware on the laptop, or it's driver implementation are what is giving the new router fits.
If a man is alone in the woods and there isn't a woke Hollywood around to call him racist, is he still white?
Forum whore
Haha... this thread has become ridiculous. Some of u guys need to take a chill pilland realise that people do stuff in different ways to achieve the results they want. Just cos they don't do it your way, doesn't mean you need to start calling people names. Or is it a general consensus on here that anyone who does anything differently to the way you do things is an idiot?
Network security - if you knowingly run with low security measures, it's your choice and your own fault if someone gets on your network and does evil things.
There's lots of other things people do with an 'accepted risk'....
Some of you guys should go for a ride or something
With regards to the OP, it sounds like it's all under control now so any further suggestions to 'help' can probably expect a less than positive response
Deus ex ukulele
A better plan would be for you to rev the throttle on your Tuono and James and I could drool. That sounds infinitely preferable to staring unless, not being an IT person, I'm missing something?
"Standing on your mother's corpse you told me that you'd wait forever." [Bryan Adams: Summer of 69]
Forum whore
Might be worth popping into DSE and umm...borrowing* a d-link N' type card then?
I had similar problems 2 or 3 months back with a customer's Linksys kit (I personally think linksys kit is complete $hite). WMP300 PCI card and WRT160N. The magazines all rave about this kit and it's supposedly been designed to work together. Not cheap either. 3 hours later I contacted Linksys live support thingie and had to enter some truly bizzarre channel and handshaking settings to get them to talk. Made a couple of old laptops next door blue screen. They had PCMCIA D-Link G650 cards in them and had to update their drivers (wasn't on the bloody d-link websites either I might add).
To cut a long story short, unless it's essential then I'm avoiding N type stuff like the plague until it's been ratified and actually works. Limiting factor for most small businesses and home networks is the broadband anyhoo.
*they've got a wonderful return policy if it doesn't work.
WPA or WPA2 with at least 8 random upper and lowercase characters including a symbol and number is fine....Something like 7,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations.
Beyond a quick 10 minute dictionary attack, nobody would seriously brute force a home user's wifi router. I'm sure their laptop battery will run flat and they'll just spend another 5 minutes looking for some idiot running unencrypted or WEP.
If you REALLY want to get onto someone's network, then spoofing an access point is a far easier method. But I'm sure if it was worth getting into they'd be running enterprise level security.
Hardcore Biker
MAC Filtering is NOT secure. Neither is hiding the SSID, and neither is WEP which can be cracked in seconds, by almost anybody.
Keeping in mind, I haven't read the thread I would suggest the following:
Check that the wireless adapter in your laptops are compatible with WPA/WPA2. Some older cards only support WEP, before better security was designed. A firmware update for your specific device may be available which may make it compatible with stronger encryption.
If you're still having issues, force the router back to 802.11b or even futher back to 802.11b for testing and see if that works.
If you're still having issues, I would return the router and pick up something like a Linksys WAG200G.
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