Networking Question: What am I missing?


 

Posted

I recently tried to change over my home network from a Linksys WRT54G v5 wireless router to a Belkin N+ (Model F5D8235-4 v2) router. The Belkin router has been upgraded to the current firmware. (I prefer Linksys, but the Belkin has a usb connection for hard drive storage that I thought would be nice)

The system consists of varying computers and OS's:

The Wired portion includes a Win XP computer, Win Vista Home Premium computer, and an HP Photosmart Premium printer.

The Wireless portion is a Macbook Pro laptop and an Apple iPhone 3G.

Now at this point you're more then likely going to think I'm having wireless issues, but that would be incorrect. For whatever reason, the Win Vista system cannot connect to the internet. The local networking works just fine. The systems can communicate with each other, they can all see the printer. The Vista system can access the router's set up page. Everything else on the network that should be able to get to the internet, can. According to the Vista system it's "seeing" the internet, but I can't access it.

I've made sure that I've got the latest drivers for the computer's network card. I've tried releasing and renewing the DHCP. There are no network IP conflicts. I've unplugged the cable modem and router several times waiting at least 30 seconds before firing up the modem, then the router... etc, etc, etc. The settings on the router are exactly the same for both the Win XP and Vista systems. I've traded out network cables to eliminate that as a possibility. I've tried different ports on the new router. It's not like I haven't set up multiple, albeit simple, networks before and made them work.

I will admit I haven't attempted to ping any websites and will try that later when I get around to feeling like beating my head against this wall again. I just remembered I hadn't tried that.

Any thoughts, suggestions? Thanks.


Throwing darts at the board to see if something sticks.....

Come show your resolve and fight my brute!
Tanks: Gauntlet, the streak breaker and you!
Quote:
Originally Posted by PapaSlade
Rangle's right....this is fun.

 

Posted

If pinging by name doesn't work, try pinging 4.2.2.1 to see if it's a DNS issue. That address is to a DNS server owned by Level 3. It's my backup DNS server if my ISP's primary and secondary DNS servers aren't resolving right.

Do you have the computers set to use static or dynamic IP addresses? If static, make sure that you didn't mistype the gateway, subnet mask or IP address as well as the DNS server addresses. Also, make sure it's a different address than anything else on the network is getting. If it's a dynamic IP address, make sure it's getting all of the correct IP information from the router including the DNS addresses. I've seen routers either not pass the DNS address at all or just pass their address as the DNS server. I've also seen that occasionally someone will have set a static IP at one time and then changed to dynamic IP's but forgot to set the DNS addressing to dynamic or left the Primary and Secondary DNS blank after removing the old info.

Since they Vista system is accessing the other computers, the router and the printer I'd look mostly at DNS and the Gateway address (since the Gateway address basically tells it what route to take to get outside the local network).


If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.

Black Pebble is my new hero.

 

Posted

First of all, thanks for the reply Texas. I put the new network back together to day to take a look at the suggestions you made.... and the &^%^$!! thing worked just fine! I didn't make any changes to the router, the cable modem or the rest of the network/computer settings.... yet it wouldn't connect properly yesterday no matter what I tried.

Figures.

As for the same IP addresses, none of the items in the network had conflicting IPs yesterday and they were getting the correct submasking as well. I always leave the settings in the dynamic IP mode. As far as I could tell, they were all getting the proper DNS information as well, but it's possible I missed something.


Throwing darts at the board to see if something sticks.....

Come show your resolve and fight my brute!
Tanks: Gauntlet, the streak breaker and you!
Quote:
Originally Posted by PapaSlade
Rangle's right....this is fun.