Why does my wireless broadband not connect at all?

Question

I have folowed instructions on installation disc

Answer 1

It is very hard to determine without more info.

I assume that the modem power light is lit and the cables are connected properly. I also assume your router WAN port is connected to the router WAN port, the router power light is on.

First, let's try a wired connection. Connect a straight CAT5 patch cable from yoiur pc to the router LAN port. Set your pc wired port to obtain ip address automatically.

Go to command prompt (start, run - type in cmd and hit enter). Once in command prompt, type in "ipconfig /all" without the quotes and hit enter. You should see a lot of info - focus in on the wired connection. See if there is an IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway assigned to it (ip address should be in the form 192.168.x.y where x is probably 0 or 1 and y is between 2 and 254; default gateway is likely 192.168.x.1 where x is the same digit as for the device's ip address.

If you do not have an ip address on the wired port, the router's DHCP server is not activates; check router manual for this and turn it on.

If you have an ip address, go back to command prompt and type in "ping 4.2.2.2" without the quotes and with the space as shown before the i.p. address and hit enter. You should see 4 positive responses. If you recieve no positive responses, the problem is with the wan side of the router. Because you have a dynamic ip from the isp, make sure the router wan port is set for dynamic ip and dynamic dns. Try the "ping 4.2.2.2" again; if it does not work, connect the cable from the pc to the modem and reboot both. Go to command prompt, type in "ipconfig /all" and see if you have an ip address. If you do not have one, call your ISP as that is the problem source.

If none of the above works, write again telling us what you did and we can dig deeper.

Answer 2

It sounds like you have not connected to your wireless network yet. If that is the case, I recomend connecting your wireless router to your computer using a network cable to get the router set up using the disk. Another thing, don't setup any security at this point, we will get back to that later. Once you are done setting up the router, exit out of the setup program and test your connection while you are still connected via the cable. If it works that means that your router is working.

At that point disconnect your computer from the router by unpluging the network cable. Then configure your wireless card to connect to your router. This is why we did not setup security yet, it can be hard enough just getting the wireless connection set up, you don't need worry about security on top of that. Once you set up the wireless card to connect to your router, test it and make sure that you can connect at that point. If you get connected, this would be the right time to go to any other computers on your network and set them up the same way.

Once all of your computers are connecting, you will need to set up a workgroup so that all the computers can connect to each other. Microsoft has wizards that will help you with this part. Once the workgroups are set up you will need to go back into the router configuration using that disk and configure the router to work with the workgroup you setup on all of your computers. Note, you only need to set up workgroups if you will be using more than one computer on your connection and will also be sharing files and printers, other wise the you can disregard the workgroup stuff.

Once you have all your computers up and running and every thing is working, this is the point where you should setup the security. Now this piece is not really nessary, I actually like it when people don't setup security, because it alows me to use their network connection if I happen to be near their router (like the park down the street from me, there a couple of networks I can use to connect to the internet with). If you don't like the idea of some stranger using your network connection, I suggest setting up security. For this you can use either WEP or WPA, either will work. You will need to use that disk again and connect to your router to configure this, each manufacture of router is a little different on the steps to do this, but usualy the disk will walk you through this part too. The important thing to remember is make sure that you set the security code exactly the same on all of your computers or you will not be able to connect to your router.

If your network is already, or once your network is set up, and you get connection problems, the best thing to do is disconnect the broadband modem's power, wait a second and then disconnect your router's power. Once both are disconnected from power, conncet the power to the broadband modem, wait a second or two, and then connect the power to your router. That usually fixes any connection problems once your network is up and running. Some broadband modems have the router built into them, in that case just unplug the one box.