I Tried To Set Up A Router/access Point In My Schools Office

[p_rry]

There's basically no wifi signal in my office at school. All we have is a lan cable that connects to one pc computer. Many of us have laptops. I brought in my netgear wgr614 wireless router which worked fine for me in America (with a 220V-12v converter). The problem is this time I can't really restart the modem like I have to do. At my home in America it was easy. All I have near me in my office is a box outside my office with a bunch of lan ports. Most of them are used in the office next door though. My netgear device was not able to dynamically pick up certain ISP information. Therefore, I have some questions.

1. Is there a way to get the primary dns, secondary dns, ip address, ip subnet mask, and gateway ip address without actually having to ask the IT guys? From what I hear it would take them two weeks before they would help me anyway.

2. Would using a access point device be a better option? I found a linksys wap54G laying around the today, but no I idea how long it's been since it was up and running. I downloaded the software/instructions from the linksys website, but it seems like I will still need the isp information. Hopefully it can automatically pick up the information, unlike my netgear. I'll check on that tomorrow.

3. Is there any difference between a wireless router and a access point? So far it they look to do the same thing.

thanks,

Perry

[NHJ]

hi,

did you reset the settings of your routeur? i'm asking this because according to what you wrote i believe it was configured to be used with an adsl modem in your country(the ISP settings).

in this case, the configuration differs, the lan cable coming to connect to the desktop computer is certainly linked to a routeur already, so you should setup your routeur to get a dynamic ip adress.

BUT maybe the IT guys disables dhcp on the routeur so you should have a look at the ip, dns and gateway on the desktop computer and set them into your routeur if the first solution isn't working.

when you plug this lan cable into your laptop, is it working directly? if so they didn't setup a mac adress limitation and this would indicate one of the two solutions would work.

the difference in a routeur and an access point is the software inside and some hardware differences also, basically, the routeur will be able to be used with a modem configured as bridge and thus letting the routeur manage the connection(password and login from isp to be put into the routeur), open port, define QOS and other network related things.

the access point is only a "relay" and nothing more, it does allow you to access another device, on the network it's invisible(its own ip adress is used once to configure it and you must be in manual ip assignement to access its interface).

[p_rry]

NHJ,

Yes, I reset my router. I had to look on google images to find out it's a pin hole that needs a paperclip to reset, lol. The lan cable runs into my router and another cable runs into the computer. The pc recognizes the lan connection, but there isn't any internet. If I unplug the the lan cable, xp lets me know.

When I plug the lan cable directly into my laptop or pc the internet works right away. Nothing else is required to connect to the internet.

What do I need to do to find the ip, dns and gateway? Is it the winiconfig command? It's been a while since I had to look this up. If I can find this info I could skip the setup wizard and just enter the info.

Since I just want a secure wifi connection in the office, I guess either device would work.

Edited November 13, 2008 by p_rry

[NHJ]

<br />NHJ,<br /><br />Yes, I reset my router. I had to look on google images to find out it's a pin hole that needs a paperclip to reset, lol. The lan cable runs into my router and another cable runs into the computer. The pc recognizes the lan connection, but there isn't any internet. If I unplug the the lan cable, xp lets me know.<br /><br />When I plug the lan cable directly into my laptop or pc the internet works right away. Nothing else is required to connect to the internet.<br /><br />What do I need to do to find the ip, dns and gateway? Is it the winiconfig command? It's been a while since I had to look this up. If I can find this info I could skip the setup wizard and just enter the info.<br /><br />Since I just want a secure wifi connection in the office, I guess either device would work.<br />

<br /><br /><br />

the reset button needs to be pushed for 15 seconds or you can reset your routeur from its interface, just to be sure, how do you configure your routeur?

you should post a log coming from the routeur, the cause of the trouble is certainy listed there.

if it's working fine into your laptop or the deskotp pc, it should be the same into your routeur but if you wanna copy the settings of the dekstop computer, just type ipconfig or go into the property of the connection once the cable is attached.

[p_rry]

I held the reset for 10-15 seconds. The password worked again as "password" and when I opened a browser, the netgear install page came up which only comes up during a first install, so it was reset.

First I'm supposed to restart the modem, but I don't have access to that. Then I turn on my router. A minute later I'm supposed to plug the cable into my computer. I haven't been able to cofigure anything else yet. The install page won't let me go any farther until it has the correct isp information. I need to get past the internet connection problem. The instructions told me to restart the modem. I wasn't able to do that. I'm thinking that might be the problem. Could that be how the router automatically picks up the isp info? Probably not, but I'm not sure why else they want me to restart it.

I still can't access webpages with with the current setup, only when the cable is directly in the computer. I can manually enter the isp info. I'll try the ipconfig command. thanks. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Edited November 13, 2008 by p_rry

[garyh]

Go you need a cross over cable rather than the standard hub to PC type cable?

[stumonster]

you don't need a modem.

If your laptop works fine when you plug it into the LAN it means that they have a DHCP server so you are set

you need to connect one of the access points via LAN cable to the LAN point and set the AP to DHCP which will aloow it to be assigned all the settings from the main routers DHCP server

then you will have to allow it to run a DHCP server so it can serve out addresses etc to your wireless clients - best to move out of the 192.168.x.x range that the school is using for their DHCP server , but it shouldn't matter as your wireless network will not be visible on the school network side except for the outward facing WAN port to their network and NAT will take care of your routing.

when you plug the AP into the LAN , set the WAN port as DHCP and if you go to the status page on the AP you should see that you have been assigned an IP , subnet , gateway , and DNS

[p_rry]

Good news! I think it was some problem in the IT department. This morning I couldn't get online anywhere in the school. Later the internet was working again. Today when I tried to set up my router, everything worked fine and I had a wireless signal going.

One other question though. All of us in the office were able to connect to the wifi signal I made. One teacher however wasn't able to view any webpages, but his computer still said he was still connected. Any idea what could cause this?

thanks,

Perry

[NHJ]

<br />Good news! I think it was some problem in the IT department. This morning I couldn't get online anywhere in the school. Later the internet was working again. Today when I tried to set up my router, everything worked fine and I had a wireless signal going.<br /><br />One other question though. All of us in the office were able to connect to the wifi signal I made. One teacher however wasn't able to view any webpages, but his computer still said he was still connected. Any idea what could cause this? <br /><br />thanks,<br />Perry<br /><br />

<br /><br /><br />

maybe static ip configured.