router problem home access

[kittycat68]

got a laptop on home access grant with internet. however when the router came it will only connect to the laptop they supplied and not to my desktop or to my partially sighted childs school laptop. they company were worse than useless do i need to purchase a better rouetr to access the internet wiressly as they other computers will work if plugged into the ethernet cable. not technically minded just wan to plug the dammed things in and have them work, kids driving me mad, i must be on a wireless system due the visually impaired child, any help here would be appricated.

There are all sorts of ways of restricting the computers that can connect to a router and it sounds like yours is restricted, probably with MAC address filtering (nothing to do with Macs, by the way). If you are able to get into your router's settings (which requires an IP address, usually "192.168.1.1", a username and a password) you can open it up to other computers.

If you have those details, or can get them, you can fix the problem with the problem you have, otherwise the easiest thing is to get what's called a wireless cable router, which will connect to the router you already have and create a new wireless network that you have control over. You could equally replace the router you have, but you'd need to know the ADSL settings to put in to it. (that's assuming your broadband isn't cable from Virgin or someone like that)

"wireless cable router" is the type to use with Virgin cable, whereas a "wireless ADSL router" is what you would use for a non Virgin cable connection.

Perhaps kittycat68 can name the make and model of router, and perhaps the ISP ? Also, if you plug a machine in with an ethernet cable, it should be quite easy to check the IP address of the router (192.168.1.1 is used by some, 192.168.1.254, 192.168.0.1 and other addresses, such as 10.0.0.2 can all be valid, just depends on the manufacturer {and model, perhaps}) but should be fairly easy to find out. Would help to know what version of Windows is in use on the desktop or the older school laptop, just to be sure for checking network info or changing settings.

Just so you know, kc - on Ebay you may find a low cost router that will do what you want... I paid under 6 quid on Monday for a wireless ADSL router (using it now), so you don't need to worry too much about a new router at 50 quid or any other 'silly money'.

You're forgetting something, NetworkGuy- you can use a cable router WITH ADSL if you plug it into the router you already have. The point being that if you do that, you don't need to know the admin login for the ADSL router or the ADSL PPP login- you just plug the new thing in and use it. There are people for whom this is the only solution, at least in the short term.

thanks all they did give me a adsl username and password.
my friends hubby suggested the ip address and i treied this today but now it seems if internet is working on one computer it wont work on another at the same time! also printer wont now work wirelessly either!

ip adress is 192.168.1.1 one is on xp one ois vista and the other is windows 7,if i buy a wireless adsl router do i just replace the one supplied or plug it into the old one and will it take three computers, the one supplies is getnet adsl ireless router GA324Wa thanks

User Manual - GetNet GA-324WA

192.168.1.1 is the default access address.
Username: admin Password: admin

Check that WLAN is enabled and see what encryption it is using.

Possibly a silly question... does your child's laptop have WI-FI, does your desktop?

Assuming they do... then run the channel scanner to see if they can pickup the SSID (the network identifier) broadcast by the router.

hi thanks for comming back! yes they all are wi-fi, they seem to be connected to the router according to the pc's but the pc they says access limited?yellow triangle with exclamation mark in it and once you get one pc working another loses it eh? getting very frustrated almost throwing it at the wall now had no problems when with Bt internet hub if thats of any information!

May be to do with DHCP... a way of allocating an ip address to each machine.

Have a look in Network:LAN on the router
Make sure it is set to Mode: DHCP Server

Windows is terrible about reporting what the real trouble is... what usually happens is that there is a problem in getting the IP address. This can be due to the DHCP server, or the wrong password being used.

Have you had to enter a WEP Key? A WEP Key in 128-bit mode is 13 ASCII characters.

Have a play with the LAN Encryption settings... first try setting it to NONE. That will then unprotect the network. If all then works, then enable WEP-128 and define a WEP KEY. Then enter that key into each of the connecting computers.

It would be useful to know what the IP addresses of the computers are when they are connected to the router (it should normally be 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3, etc). I think you do this by typing "ipconfig" at the "run" command.

DHCP is covered in section 3.4.1.2 of the user manual - on the PDF it shows 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.254 as possible addresses.

If the number of IPs in the pool is limited to 1, then only a single PC could connect at one time.

On DHCP I have used 192.168.1.101 as the start address and 192.168.1.120 as the end address (allowing for up to 19 devices to be used). All I would suggest is that you check the start and end addresses allow for at least 5 or 6 machines so 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.254 would be fine, (as would 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.25,) but 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.2 could give the situation you have found.

A second possibility is that Wireless security (Wireless Access Control, section 3.4.3.3) has been set up to only allow the Home Access Laptop on via wireless. This is a sensible option in many situations, but could give you a problem as it would prevent any other machines from connecting via wi-fi, yet plugging in with an ethernet cable would allow them to work. If the router shows 'Allow Listed' then your desktop and other laptop are being blocked. Changing wireless Access Control mode to 'Disabled' should allow your desktop and any other PCs to connect via wi-fi.

Hope one of these explains your situation and should then be quite easy to solve. Fingers crossed!