Wireless Network connection question
 

I am at my parents house with my laptop. They have high speed buy they thought they didn't have a wireless router. I looked under their computer and it turns out they do. The inetwork cable is pluged into the router then another cable from the router to their desktop. I am able to pick up their signal but it is security enabled. Does anyone know how I would go about getting the Network key either off the actual router itself or off of my parents computer?

Look up the manual for the router online and find how to get to the web interface. If you are connected to the router via a cable on the desktop then you should be able to just reset the password.

What brand and model #?

Went to the web site and figured it out.

Of course my father was hanging over my shoulder the whole time yelling at me not to break anything

Instead of starting a new thread, I thought I would ask my question here too. I dusted off my linksys router after not using it for two years when I moved into a new apt last week.

The problem I am having with it is that I am getting an "excellent" signal with my pc at all times but it loses connection about every 10 mins. Then I just go in and reconnect and it reconnects in about 10 secs and this pattern repeats itself over and over again.

It's made me resort to my laptop which I am having no problems with.

Any answers as to what may be causing the problem on my pc?

If they're not hooked up via wireless it would be pretty tough to mess things up unless you start messing with forwarded ports or something (not that you don't realize this).

I'm guessing that your pc & your router just don't like each other.

Or at least that's the conclusion I've come to with my own situation which is similar, except only intermittent instead of at regular intervals.

I miss my old 2wire router :(

Yeah, I had a 2wire modem/router when I was had AT&T DSL at the last apt and it worked great.

I'd suggest to update your firmware.

Also what type of encryption are you using?

I'm using a Linksys befw11s4. And I updated the firmware to their latest update available which is (1.45.10, Apr 15 2004)

And I'm using WEP and a MAC filter.

Try disabling WEP and just going unsecure, does the same thing happen? Same with the MAC filtering.

Is this built in wireless NIC or a PCMCIA/USB on your computer.

Also have you tried changing channels on the router?

Make sure you have the latest wireless drivers for you wireless NIC on your desktop pc, if it's just a normal cable (cat 5 or "wired") connection, make sure you have the manufacturers drivers as opposed to the windows ones.

Disable bluetooth if you have it as well as I've seen that conflict with wireless NICs for some reason.

Channel 11 for some reason always works best for me.

For the technologically challenged, how does one do this? I too dusted off my linksys router when we got a new laptop last month. It generally works well, but if there is any period of inactivity, I have to turn the router on and off to re-connect.

By going to the Linksys site and going to support and finding the downloads for your device.

1) I had my connection unsecure for the first day or two and no change.
2) I have a Linksys Wireless-G PCI Adapter and it's not built-in.
3) I've now tried channels 1, 6 & 11. All have the same results

I just tried to update the drivers on the Adapter and it said I had the latest. I'm not sure if I have bluetooth enabled or not?? How does one find that out?

I realize this seems way too simple, but thought I'd throw it out there. Do you perhaps have a conflicting IP address on the router with another device?

How do I find this out?

Usually it would give you a notice when you disconnected.

Another way to find out is to connect everything you have going through the router and then check the IPs via the web interface of the router.

This happens most often when you have one computer set to pull a static IP from the router when another device has already been assigned that IP dynamically. (At least in my experience.)

Ok, it looks like I "may" have solved my problem. I compared my network properties tabs and saw that on my PC under the "Authentication" tab the "Enable IEEE 802.1x authentication for this network" box was checked. Since I have unchecked it, my network has stayed up.

Nice little piece of troubleshooting!

That might help the problem. ;)

Ha! Thanks. Yeah, it's been about an hour now. Things still looking good.

Good job!

I think maybe the best course of action is to make sure that the PC is not attempting to secure any sort of authentication from the router. I believe it periodically checks for said authentication, and could foul up the connection.





(Not funny? Ok, you're probably right. I tried, and I am sorry.)