Does anyone know much about routers?

[Richard Schollar]

Well, if Andrew's setup will mirror mine, ultimately the Gateway and DHCP address and DNS server address will all be the IP address of the router on his local subnet. The IP address of his network adapter will conform to the subnet mask. I think his issue at the moment is that his router hasn't connected to his ISP (I think, but it's so hard trying to decide these things when you aren't sat in front of the problematic computer). Setting the VPI and VCI and encapsulation will allow him to connect to his ISP (hopefully). Failing that, 56Kbps really ain't that bad

 

[starl]

to me, that is weird.. because all that info is specific to my isp. well - except my ip of network adapter - that conforms to *my* network. But the configuration of the router to connect to the isp has to be the isps address...

as for my network adapter - none of that is configured - it just grabs it...

i can't imagine that uk vs us would be that different... tho, i have no settings for VPI or VCI....

 

[AndrewRossington]

Sorry, I was thinking about something else:

VPI 0

VCI 38

Make sure you have PPPoA selected as your encapsulation (if you have this option).

Next step is to check that it's actually working.

I think you may have to go into Start>Control Panel>Network Connections and right-click on your ethernet card and click Enable (if that's an option) as it appeared to be disabled from your ipconfig info.

I've gotten as far as that. There is no option for an ethernet card. There's the TalkTalk, Local Area Connection (which it says is connected) and something called 1394 Connection.

Another thought - you're not using Windows Media Center Edition are you? If so, do you have Windows Defender installed (the MS anti-spyware software)?

I don't know what Windows Media Centre Edition is, though I do have Windows Defender installed.

 

[Richard Schollar]

You'll be on XP Home then? Don't worry about the 1394 as this is a firewire connection (I think). When you log into the router using that IP address, does it tell you what connection speeds you're getting? Does your surfing appear faster? Can you call up a web page without difficulty?

 

[AndrewRossington]

Yes, XP home.

What happens is I fill in the VPI/VCI info and so on.

I click "save settings" or whatever at the bottom.

It goes to a screen that says "rebooting router" and as the bar gets to about 50% a little bubble on my desktop pops up saying "local area network cable unplugged" or something like. - which I think is the computer reacting to the router rebooting.

I load up the internet explorer and it does not load any pages.

The connection speed was 100mb/s I think. It's deffinitely connected to the router, but I suspect the router won't dial the internet connection.

 

[Richard Schollar]

If you have an ADSL connection, the router does not need to dial a connection. What it does need to do is connect to your ISP (you should have been requested for your ISP logon and password details in the router set up screens). Do you know that you definitely have broadband access? If it's thru TalkTalk, have they confirmed that the service is fully operational for you?

 

[JamieDuncan]

Ok i would like to point out that this post isnt that helpful so no one gets annoyed by what im about to say.

A friend of mine bought the same model wireless adapter and asked me to set it up for him, being fairly knowledgable about computers i thought it would be a piece of cake.
Unfortunately the same problem kept occuring, whenever the router connected it never ever lit up the internet bulb for some strange reason.

3 weeks of phoning indian call centres, all of whome reading from the same troubleshooting manual telling us to remove all wiring turn off router for 20 seconds, re-wire router and turn it on again.

I mustve done it 20 times it was very annoying.

In the end we took the router back and got a bt wireless router
it worked pretty much straight away (a couple hours)
but then as the wireless rate is only 56k it seemed quite disheartening that we could barely use our 8mb broadband.

just wondering if you have had any of this stress that comes with wireless routers yet?

 

[starl]

welll.. if you wanna share stories
I had a router go out on me - just the internet part. Was working fine, then just stopped. I've had enough experience with the stuff that I knew the basic troubleshooting (you gotta recycle the darn things at least once a month) - anyway - no go.
Looked online... no help
Called support... no help (tho, gotta admit, he tried)

so I bought a new one. tada - all is well. So, somehow, just the internet component died ... but then, I don't know enough about what's going on inside the darn thing to understand that - I just set them up.

but - not sure if that's the case here (yet) - sounds like the thing still needs configuring - tho I find it *very* interesting that the configuration differs by country.. I also have the linksys 54whatever wireless router and there's talk here that I'm like *huh?*

hmm - one quick question - back on topic - we aren't trying to get the *wireless* part to run yet, are we??? I've always found it best to get the wired working - then mess with the wireless setup

 

[JamieDuncan]

Do any wireless routers tranfer at better speeds than 56k?

because if that was the case id get one myself.

Configuration is half the battle,
the other half is self control to not throw it out a window after many attempts to get it working

 

[starl]

there's a new wireless configuration, actually, that just came out.
called wirless n