Problems with wireless connection at home.

[W311]

Hi,

We recently got a wireless setup at home and are facing the following problems:

1) Not able to surf Yahoo mail and Hotmail if connected via the wireless router. If we try to bypass the router it works.

2) Not able to setup LAN along with interenet connectivity.
basically we need to share files across the notebooks and browse net as well.

The equipments we have got are the following:
a) 3-Notebooks - 2 with wireless adapter and one without.
b) Netgear 802.11b wireless router
c) DSL connection.


Any solutions to the problems will be appreciated.

Thanks,
W311

[M/Q]

Welcome to the forum. What do you mean when you say you bypass the router? What are the model and operating systems of the notebooks? What NetGear router is it? Is this a problem with just the wireless clients ? Does the wired client have Internet access? Did this work at one time and just now stopped working or has it never worked right?

I have linked some webpages tht might be helpful to see if the sytem is configured correctly.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q313242

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/support/troubleshoot_wireless.htm

[W311]

Thanks for the reply.

Following are the answers to the questions u had asked...

* Bypassing the router means that we are connecting to one of the notebook directly through the ethernet cable coming out of the DSL modem, i.e. we do not use the wireless router at all.

* The model and OS for the notebooks are:
Notebook1 - Toshiba A45S250, Windows XP home, With external Netgear Wireless PC card(802.11b)
Notebook2 - Dell Inspiron 5100, Windows XP Home , With inbuilt 802.11g wireless card.
Notebook3 - IBM Thinkpad, Windows XP Professional, without any wireless card.

* The NetGear router we are using is following:
--------------
Model MR814
802.11b Cable/DSL Wireless Router
--------------

* The problem is with both the wireless as well as wired clients.

* The wired client does have interent access, when using the wireless configuraton we connect the wired client to the ethernet output coming from the router and the other two notebooks use the wireless connectivity.

* I actually dont remember if the mail sites worked initially or not , because while setting up the network initially we were facing a lot of connectivity problems, So we altered the configuration a lot and tried various options till we got a connectivity in all the notebooks.


Thanks,
W311

[M/Q]

Do you feel that you have the wireless settings configured correctly? Did you follow the install manual form NetGear? I am just trying to isolate the problem, if the wired client is able to connect correctly then we can assume that it is not a DSL problem. Do you have any firewall programs/Internet security suites or have the XP firewall enabled on the computers. Did the wireless links ever work since it was new? Check out this link and see if you can get the two notebooks to link, that will indicate that it is reasonably sure that they are working. Have you gone into the routers webpage configuration and set it up as per the manual. and all the wireless information is the same on all three nodes? Is WEP enabled? If it is disable it until you get the system working.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/bowman/02april08.asp

Did, you check out the other post's links and determine that the configuration was correct? If you are sure that all the configuration are correct, then it appears to be a hardware problem. The ad hoc test will determine if it is the pc cards or not. Have you tried connecting the other notebooks via wired connections and seen if that worked? If that all works, I would try to replace the router or call NetGear tech support. They will ask if you have the latest drivers and firmware in the components, so you might was well do that in advance. Going to the tech support is usually required to get an approved RMA. It is very hard to test hardware, the only way most users have is to replace or check the components out with known good devices. If you know anyone that has a known good notebook and wireless card, have them try to associate with the router.

I just reread your last post. Is the system working correctly now? Just in case it isn't I will still enter this post.

[tripwire45]

Is your router handing out DHCP IP assignments or are your internal IP addresses manually configured? It's possible that your laptops aren't on the same subnet as the router and thus cannot communicate through it. Did you change the default IP address settings on the wireless router?

[W311]

We did not change the default IP settings on the wireless router.
However we have made the IP's static for each notebooks.

For security we have also enabled access to the Mac addresses for each notebook.

The subnet is same as that of router and we are able to surf the net form all hte notebooks.....so the communication b/w notebooks and router is happening.
The problem comes only when we try to access Yahoo mail or Hotmail.
I further checked and these sites are not blocked in the router configuration..strange. :confused:

[M/Q]

You did not answer if you have any third party firewall or Internet security suites. Or if the XP firewall is enabled. As that might be causing the very specific block you are referring to .

[W311]

Hi all,
Thanks for the response..I was able to sort out the problem by calling the Netgear support..though it took me 30 min to connect to them :-))
But the solution was pretty strange and I could not get how it worked...the guy asked me to log in to the adminstrative option of the router and change the "MTU Size" under Lan setup from 1500 to 1440 .. and thats it...everything worked !!

Pretty strange....does any one has an explanation for this...just curious


Thanks
W311

[M/Q]

I had forgotten about that being an issue with NetGear. The correct MTU (maximum transfer units) setting for PPPoE is usually 1492. This is because there is an 8-byte "wrapper" to make the PPP packet "look like" an Ethernet packet to the network card. An MTU setting of 1500 will slow transfers substantially due to packet-fragment resends, and then cause the time outs.