ICS, wireless, Access point problems...big time

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Guest

Hard problem to describe. Added a new laptop to a home three PC
network using a Linksys router and ICS for my dial up...no real
wireless or cable high speed available. All four use XP Home SP2 OS.
After much coaching from this forum, tweaked settings and all
PCs/Laptop visible to all others. In other words, the network worked
like a charm. Enter wireless.

Rumor has it that there may be wireless wideband access in the near
future at my location....but, in the meantime, I plan to drink a lot
of coffee at the local WiFi spot. To set the system up, I implemented
a wireless access for the laptop (which has Bluetooth wireless built
in) on my hardwired LAN....or I tried to set it up.

The wireless link works but the network link has zero signal. Swap out
hard wire, perfect. Go to wireless, link shows with execellent signal,
no thru-put. Ergo, I didn't set the wireless system up. And this is
where I get into problems...I don't know what to set up.

The ICS NIC uses 192.168.0.1 address and the router was configured as
a hub with address 192.168.0.254 and no DHCP. Each PC/Laptop get IP
address and DNS server addresses automatically and DHCP is enabled. OK
so far. Then I added a wireless router to be configured as a wireless
access point. I have hit a wall, here.

The Netgear instructions are so barebones as to be useless. I need to
configure this device with its own IP address and wth its DHCP shut
off....but the instructions say to enable the DHCP in my primary
router, which has been shut off. When I enable the DHCP in the primary
router, what do I populate the tables with? Unpopulated, nothing seems
to be affected....but I really don't want to mess with success.

But, and this is the real problem...I cannot get the access point to
let me connect the laptop to the internet either with the wireless or
hard wired connections. When I stumble onto anything that seems to
work...I get a connections....the thru put is zero. Usually, I cannot
even access the damned router to configure it. I remember the thruput
problem from the past when my corporate IT folks said it was likely a
conflict with the wireless and NIC based connections. I have tried to
eliminate this conflict, but I am not sure how to shut either service
off or on at the laptop.

What I really want is some step by step steps, such as those available
for setting up the ICS. The equipment sellers want you to buy
expensive integrated all in one systems, but the dial up and ICS
confuse thise whole selection process...and I don't want to invest in
a bunch of equipment that does not work as I need it to.

Just point me in the right direction. I am bitching to the Netgear
folks, but they have no real support.

Thanks for the help.

Henry
 
Try:

1. If the NetGear device is a router, why not simply configure it the same
as the Linksys and get rid of the Linksys altogether?

2. If you are going to use both devices plus ICS, then DHCP must be
disabled on both devices.

3. If you are going to use both devices, then you should connect a Linksys
LAN port to a NetGear LAN (or uplink) port. Do not connect anything to the
NetGear WAN/Internet port. Assign a 192.168.0.x address to the NetGear
device.

4. Bluetooth adapters frequently have elaborate configuration options -
double check your documentation.

Doug Sherman
MCSE, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP
 
I was thinking the same thing for item 1...except that I had to work
so hard to get it right with the current router I just didn't want to
mess with my primary network. Then, as my frustration mounted, I was
afraid that actually doing what you suggested would get me into more
trouble given the lack of Netgear instructions and support. If I was
having so much trouble setting up an access point, the other
configuration might be worse...which I don't think is true.

Netgear actually got the laptop to see the internet using a hardwire
connection with the ICS going into the Netgear Internet port. So, the
first problem was solved...hopefully. I have pinged them for written
instructions in case I have to do it all over again for some reason.

Now the problem is enabling the wireless link. The XP setup wizard
won't do it and referred me to KB 871122. I need to review the
Bluetooth documentation now to see how to set it up.

I will keep your suggestions on file in case everything blows up. I
also expect I would have invested in a better wireless router if I
hadn't been focused on the access point approach.

Thanks for the help.

Henry
 
Well, it gets worse and worse. I replaced the wireless Netgear router
with a wireless linksys router with more horsepower...taking your
advice to go back to go.. However, the PC I was trying to use to set
up the original netgear has gotten screwed up. Before putting in the
new Linksys wireless router, I put the old non-wireless router back in
to make sure everything was working OK. It wasn't...one pc cannot talk
to the network or get on-ling. I swapped cables, slots, and NICs with
the same result...it cannot connect to get an IP address...this is
going back to my orginal and very well functioning non-wireless
Linksys router used as a hub. When I try to go into the router setup
from that PC, I get the old Netgear setup and cannot access the
original Linksys. I am baffelled. This is the only dinged computer and
it was not the only one I was trying to set up the netgear from. I
have uninstalled and re-installed stuff and it just keeps getting hung
up and not being able to get an IP address.

Until I get back to ground zero, I cannot go forward. To top that off,
it is not clear that the new wireless router can be configured as a
hub. On-line help isn't very clear on that...since dial up is obsolete
for all practical purposes.

Any help would be appreciated.

Henry
 
Try:

1. Disconnect the NetGear and/or new Linksys device and manually configure
TCP/IP on the problem machine:

Right click on the Local Area Connection (you may have several of these -
make sure you choose the LAC for the present adapter) and select Properties,
highlight TCP/IP and click the Properties button. Enter these settings:

IP address 192.168.0.250 (or some other non-conflicting
192.168.0.x address)
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway 192.168.0.1
Preferred DNS 192.168.0.1

Reboot and run ipconfig /all to see if these settings are retained.

2. Possibly the problem machine has suffered a coincidental corruption of
TCP/IP. You could try Start/Run cmd ENTER and run 'netsh winsock reset
catalog' or try one of the winsock fixes:

http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm
http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=257
http://www.spychecker.com/program/winsockxpfix.html

Doug Sherman
MCSE, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP
 
I was just about to ask exactly this question...I was suspicious of
the TCPIP configuration. I was also about to buy a new NIC..the old
one is no longer supported. Try for a clean sweep. Will try your fix,
first. Then, back to the wireless implementation.

With the wireless router setup, it wants a real Internet connection
attached to the internet port for the set up. How do I get around
that?...of course, that is the wizard and there must be a manual way
to do it...which should be to just duplicate the hub settings and
addresses in the wireless router that work so well in the wired
router. Does that make sense?? There are more parameters in the wired
setup, which confuses me.

Thanks for you help.

Henry
 
Just leave the Internet port set to obtain an address automatically (DHCP) -
don't connect an ethernet cable to it. The only critical settings are that
you must give the router's LAN connection a non-conflicting 192.168.0.x
address; and you must turn off DHCP. Your computers should be getting
192.168.0.x addresses either from ICS or through manual configuration.

Note, when you first configure the router, it probably has DHCP enabled, and
it probably gave you a 192.168.1.x (or some other non-192.168.0.x) address.
After you change the router's IP to 192.168.0.x, you will have to make sure
that the computer's IP is also changed back to 192.168.0.x.

Consider using static IP addressing on all of your network machines:

1. The rudimentary DHCP services provided by ICS and bottom end Internet
routers are primarily useful only if one or both of the following are true:

a. You have a large number of machines on the network - you don't.
b. You have a laptop which will frequently be moved to another network
where it will need different settings. In your case it sounds like most
such moves would use the wireless adapter, so there would be little
inconvenience in assigning a static IP to the wired adapter and leaving the
wireless adapter set to automatic.

2. Many people spend a great deal of time troubleshooting DHCP issues on
small networks where relying on DHCP provides little benefit and
unnecessarily creates a single point of failure which could easily be
avoided with static addressing.

3. With static addresses you can reliably connect to another machine by
using \\<IPaddress>. You don't have to memorize the addresses. You can
create lmhosts files which will map the computer names to their static
addresses; and these mappings can be loaded into memory upon machine
startup. You can also create desktop shortcuts to them. If you were to do
this, then you could still connect to shared resources even if DHCP, bowser
service, and broadcasts all failed.

4. For the reasons stated in #3, even on large networks with sophisticated
DHCP servers, machines providing shared files or printers are typically
configured with static addresses.

Doug Sherman
MCSE, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP
 
Adendum - the LAN adapter on the ICS machine does not need to be statically
configured - it's IP will always be 192.168.0.1 anyway, and it should not
have a default gateway or DNS server configured.

Doug Sherman
MCSE, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP
 
First procedure worked and did the second to make sure. I will try and
go back to the original configuration to see if the TCPIP issue is
permanentely fixed. New settings seem to hold and for a short time I
actually had the ICS sharing and tray icon showing up...but I tweaked
and they went away and I can't get them back...but the ICS process
works. So, its off to set up the wireless router/hub now.

Henry
 
Thanks...it will take a while to digest and implement your other
suggestions on the wireless router. Thanks for your generous support.

As an element of completeness, the ICS icons and connection showed up
by themselves...it takes about ten minutes for the sytem to make up
its mind that it is actuall using ICS. Strange but likely something is
still amiss and it takes that long for the system to grunt through
various options.

As another element of completeness, I was not able to see all the
various computers on my network until I was instucted to shut down the
windows browser service on all but one or two machines...removes a
conflict that was flat out blocking the total view of the network from
each machine...never new about that process with the browser.

AGain, thanks, and hopefully I will post a successful ending to this
whole thing.

Regards,

Henry
 
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