IP addresses for a home WAN

[npharrison]

Hi. Until recently I had a nice little WAN running at home. I have a SKY
Broadband netgear box, and I set up a belkin wireless card on my son's pc,
and it worked. Patchy, but it still worked. If my wife brought her laptop
home I could use it on there too.

On my PC the network showed as a direct LAN connection, plus an internet
gateway, which was enabled to allow access. The trouble with this was it was
very unstable, dropping all the time. So I disabled it. Now, when I try to
enable it, I get a box telling me that another LAN connection has the IP
address that the automatic addressing wishes to use.

My wife has brought her laptop home, and I've got a Wii for the family for
Xmas, so I want to enable the WAN. I've updated my Norton AV, and to my
surprise, the Network Gateway loaded again. It was as unstable as ever, then,
just like before, stopped loading, allowing the direct connection.

My wife's laptop knows the service is there, knows how strong the signal is,
but can't connect.

So what I would like is steps to connect the WAN up again. I have used the
Network Wizard, but it keeps messing around trying to bring my Bluetooth
modem or fax modem into the WAN, and won't give me the option to exclude it.

I've checked some FAQs, but none seem to leave me any the wiser. So I would
like instructions on how to reconfigure the network, maybe from scratch, or
how to check the IP addresses and if necessary renumber them. They are the
standard 192.168.0.1 etc

Hope someone can help this time round. Thank you.

 

[Jim]

Hi. Until recently I had a nice little WAN running at home. I have a SKY
Broadband netgear box, and I set up a belkin wireless card on my son's pc,
and it worked. Patchy, but it still worked. If my wife brought her laptop
home I could use it on there too.

On my PC the network showed as a direct LAN connection, plus an internet
gateway, which was enabled to allow access. The trouble with this was it
was
very unstable, dropping all the time. So I disabled it. Now, when I try to
enable it, I get a box telling me that another LAN connection has the IP
address that the automatic addressing wishes to use.

My wife has brought her laptop home, and I've got a Wii for the family for
Xmas, so I want to enable the WAN. I've updated my Norton AV, and to my
surprise, the Network Gateway loaded again. It was as unstable as ever,
then,
just like before, stopped loading, allowing the direct connection.

My wife's laptop knows the service is there, knows how strong the signal
is,
but can't connect.

So what I would like is steps to connect the WAN up again. I have used the
Network Wizard, but it keeps messing around trying to bring my Bluetooth
modem or fax modem into the WAN, and won't give me the option to exclude
it.

I've checked some FAQs, but none seem to leave me any the wiser. So I
would
like instructions on how to reconfigure the network, maybe from scratch,
or
how to check the IP addresses and if necessary renumber them. They are the
standard 192.168.0.1 etc

Hope someone can help this time round. Thank you.

I understand your post to mean that you have a computer directly connected
to the outside world through one NIC and directly connected to the local pc.
Is this correct?

If so, then the connection between the two local computers must be made
through a special ethernet cable (built like a null modem serial cable). My
understanding
is that such a connection can only work with two computers.

In any case, life will be much easier if you buy a wireless router. You
connect your broadband connection to the input port of the router. You then
connect up to
4 computers through local ethernet ports, and you can connect as many
wireless computers as you can afford through the wireless facility.

Jim

 

[npharrison]

Sorry Jim, but at the moment there is just one pc, mine, which his linked by
cable to the broadband router. There is a laptop, which has a built-in
wireless connector, which can tell that there is a signal; has all the keys
necessary to access it, but cannot connect.

It is my main pc which sometimes connects directly to the internet but also
allows an internet gateway to form, but I cannot enable it to allow other
computers to use this access point, as it says that the IP address is already
in use by another connection. So I'm at a loss where to start to rectify this
situation.

 

[Jim]

Sorry Jim, but at the moment there is just one pc, mine, which his linked
by
cable to the broadband router. There is a laptop, which has a built-in
wireless connector, which can tell that there is a signal; has all the
keys
necessary to access it, but cannot connect.

It is my main pc which sometimes connects directly to the internet but
also
allows an internet gateway to form, but I cannot enable it to allow other
computers to use this access point, as it says that the IP address is
already
in use by another connection. So I'm at a loss where to start to rectify
this
situation.

I have been out of pocket over the Xmas holiday...

One problem at a time...

You have a broadband router which is connected through its input port to the
broadband. The router is also connected to a PC through an ethernet output
port.
Every now and then, the PC seems to be directly connected to the broadband
(bypass the router somehow?). However, when you attempt to connect
another PC to the router, you receive a message that the IP address is
already in use.

That message comes from the ISP. The ISP will not allow two computers to
have the same IP address (it is a violation of the internet protocol).

It seems to me that your problem is a faulty router (or faulty setup). A
properly working router will not allow a local PC to circumvent it.
Therefore, I
would try running diagnostics on the router.

One further observation is that a router includes an access point in
addition to all of the other things that it does.

Jim