Home network help

[damndave]

I just switched over to Charter cable for internet and am now having issues. Maybe someone can give me suggestions on what is wrong.

I have a Netgear router to go with my Charter cable. All of the wired connections work fine. All of the cell phones and tablets work fine. In one of the rooms I have a PS3, Vulkano (like a sling box) and computer sharing a wired Internet connection through an old Linksys router/switch. What I discovered is that when these items are all connected to the switch, wifi to the laptops will sporadically lose internet. When I connect the wired connection directly into the computer, wifi signal/connection comes back to the laptops and works fine.

From this process of elimination it seems some setting is wrong in the Linksys router/switch. The settings are default other than disabling DHCP.

Any suggestions on what it may be? I used these exact same settings with U-verse and worked fine, but not with Charter.

[MaHoTex]

I think you need DHCP on.... Sound like you may have duplicate address on devices.

[bigbearbear]

Is the Wifi on your Linksys on? Try turning it off and use only the Wifi on your Netgear.

[boarder010]

I think you need DHCP on.... Sound like you may have duplicate address on devices.

+1

a full power down and restart of the networking hardware works wonders sometimes too

[HappyCamper781]

Wireless crosstalk?

[sholling]

You can have two or more wifi access points as long as only one is handing out IPs and as long as both are configured correctly. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it's possible that you left DHCP turned on in the old router or you have two different keys. Also do not use the WAN port on the old router to connect to the new router.

If you want to setup the old router as a wireless access point then turn off DHCP in the old router and give it all the same configuration information (SSID and key) as the main router and just put them on different channels. That usually only makes sense of they are both 802.11n or both 802.11g switches. On the other hand if you don't need the router to be a wireless access point then just invest $30 ($20 when on sale) on a no hassles gigabit switch.

[damndave]

I will try turning off DHCP and see if that works.

The old router does not have WiFi. Simply just an old wired router from about 10 years ago.

Do I need to assign a different IP for each device on this switch? On my main newer router it shows my 3 devices with the same IP being shared.

[MaHoTex]

To make it easy, you need to leave DHCP turned on and do not assign static IPs on each computer/system.

However, you can only have one DHCP active at a time. If you have multiple routers, ensure the DHCP is only active on one of them.

The purpose of DHCP is to automatically assign an IP so you do not have to manually do it. For most people this works just fine. If you host a server or need a fixed IP, you have to manually assign it, or prevent it from expiring in the router.

[damndave]

Well I couldn't really figure it out...BUT I just realized that my Vulkano has built in wifi. I was almost positive that it did not based on the product but it does. So I just went wifi on both mf my devices and hooked up the computer straight to the router. Everything is working like it should now.....I hope..

[MaHoTex]

Great! If you have any issues feel free to PM me. I might be able to help.

[stilly]

When working with WIFI I have found a couple of helpful things.
1 Observation that bothers me, SOME routers will not let more than one or two wifi devices connect at the same time. Sometimes it will happen and sometimes it will not. Weird anomaly it seems to pop up at times.

There are TWO things to take into consideration when dealing with WIFI selection and installation.
1. How many OTHER wireless devices do you have? Some WIFI run on the 2.4GHZ (along with some phones in your house) spectrum and can get interference very easily and have issues even though there are no other WIFI devices/networks around.
2. WIFI channel selection WILL affect your connection results in some cases. I used a WIFI analyzer at a jobsite once and determined that channels 2, 6-8 and 9 had NOBODY else on them and were wide open and ready to be populated. Well, after setting it up, I found that channel 4 which had a neighboring wifi setup on it from the business next door was the optimum channel. Even though the other channels were open and clear, they did not broadcast very well and it got HORRIBLY bad recpetion and loss of signals/ connectivity. But once I changed the channel again, BAM! signal hitting 80 instead of 10-45 and it has been ROCK solid since. That made me a believer. I wish I had a device that showed me ALL chatter in a particular spectrum/ channel setup.

Anyways, it might be good to have a closer look at your setup in case you need to rely on your backup (and you WILL need to rely on your backup one day...)