'Limited or no connectivity' attepting to connect to 54Mb g/net

[Guest]

I just moved into a new town house shared by 4 other people, all but one of
which have laptops. I was given a security code to access the secure wifi
network. All seems to go smoothly until it attempted to rectrieve an IP
address. That was the first time I noticed the 'Limited or no connectivity'
status message. I've browsed through similar threads for comments and
suggestion, but my situation is a little different. Hope you can suggest
something.

I'm pretty good with this stuff normally, work in IT and all that. The other
guys/girls in the house know less than me re:wifi configs, but they managed
to connect first time, hastle free with the security code given to them by
the property manager. I've tried several times over the last weeks days since
moving in with limited success. I'm on XP SP2. First thing it tested was to
take down my personal firewalls. No effect. I would find it hard to beleive
that I'm being rufused on the grounds that the network is configured not to
accept IP requests from unknown users. Everyone would have had the same
problem otherwise. I seem to be connected to the router, but can't establish
an external connection with the internet. It always seems to time out and I
see the same local APIPA address. Where does the DHCP service reside, on the
router or the local telco switch? Like I said i'm not that familiar with wifi
nitty gritty. I'll talk with my property manager again but I think he knows
less than I do.

Any suggestions would be very much appeciated.

 

[Guest]

Normally that message appears when there is a problem getting an IP address
from the DHCP server, as it seems you are aware. Since you say the others
sharing the network are not too tech savvy, it's a pretty safe bet that the
DHCP server is located right on the router.

You mentioned that you did not think they would have MAC checking turned on,
but I would check it anyway. It is possible that it was turned on after
having been set up for a while and whoever is running the router just hit an
option to add all previously known MACs (some routers I have seen have a
feature similar to this).

If MAC checking is turned off, another thing to check would be how many IP
addresses the DHCP server is allocating. There should be an option there
somewhere on the configuration page, usually it's set at a high number, such
as 100, but sometimes they are only configured to issue a couple of addresses.

Failing that, find an IP of somebody who is on the network successfully and
try to manually configure your TCP settings to a random IP on that subnet.
That way you'll know whether the problem is in fact with DHCP or if there is
an underlying problem somewhere.

 

[Chuck]

I just moved into a new town house shared by 4 other people, all but one of
which have laptops. I was given a security code to access the secure wifi
network. All seems to go smoothly until it attempted to rectrieve an IP
address. That was the first time I noticed the 'Limited or no connectivity'
status message. I've browsed through similar threads for comments and
suggestion, but my situation is a little different. Hope you can suggest
something.

I'm pretty good with this stuff normally, work in IT and all that. The other
guys/girls in the house know less than me re:wifi configs, but they managed
to connect first time, hastle free with the security code given to them by
the property manager. I've tried several times over the last weeks days since
moving in with limited success. I'm on XP SP2. First thing it tested was to
take down my personal firewalls. No effect. I would find it hard to beleive
that I'm being rufused on the grounds that the network is configured not to
accept IP requests from unknown users. Everyone would have had the same
problem otherwise. I seem to be connected to the router, but can't establish
an external connection with the internet. It always seems to time out and I
see the same local APIPA address. Where does the DHCP service reside, on the
router or the local telco switch? Like I said i'm not that familiar with wifi
nitty gritty. I'll talk with my property manager again but I think he knows
less than I do.

Any suggestions would be very much appeciated.

DHCP service is generally supplied by the WiFi router that you connect to. If
you're getting an APIPA address, and seeing "Limited or no connectivity", it's
likely that you are not connecting to the WiFi Access Point in question.

Your firewalls are IP based, and are only necessary when you are connected to a
network. They are not relevant to your ability (or lack of ability) to connect
to this WAP. What is relevant here is 2 factors:
# The authentication / encryption mode in use.
# The nature of the encryption key ("security code") used.

There are various reasons why using a given security code may or may not work.
Depending upon the equipment involved, you may have to supply it in either text,
or in hex. Here's hoping that your equipment is capable of either, as if the
limitation is in the base station, you'd have to have the property manager
change the code on the base station (and on the current 3 tenants) to
accommodate you.

Knowing what the base station (WAP) make and model is would be a good starting
point.

And you are certain that you're trying to connect to the correct WAP? In any
WiFi neighbourhood, how many WAPs using the SSID "Linksys" can you find?