A little Internet help would be greatly appreciated

D

dario1977

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Joined
Jan 20, 2005
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I'm sure you guys get this type of problem a lot so I apologize for the redundancy. I don't know too much about computers so I'll also apologize for my ignorance because this may be tedious for you.
Finally, since my problem is limiting my access to the Internet I'll also apologize for any lack of communication you get on my part.

In simple terms I cannot connect to the Internet. I am living with two other guys and we have cable Internet but only one of us has the Internet. We're running it through a router (D-Link) and his is the only one that currently has the Internet. At one point we have all had the Internet, but when one has it the other two do not, and the one who has it now has had it the longest and seems to acquire it the easiest.

All three of our computers are running Windows XP. Mine is a Sony VAIO PCVRS630G, the one with the Internet is a Gateway I think, and the third is a no-name brand I think.

I've lived with the third guy and his computer before and we were both connected to the same Internet with another computer via a D-Link router. We did have to reset the router about every 4 hrs because the connection would shut down. I don't know if that is relevant or not. And I think we had DSL.

I've run a diagnostic on the connection and this is what I got:

Connection test passed

This adapter is configured to obtain an IP address automatically. No DHCP Server is present on the network. Windows selected an IP address using Alternate Private IP Addresses

Ping Gateway 0.0.0.0: Failed

No DNS server is available for this connection

No WINS server is available for this connection

Ping Network 169.254.255.255 Failed

I have no idea what any of that means but when trying to repair the Local Area Connection I get this message:

Windows could not finish repairing the problem because the following action cannot be completed: Renewing your IP address.

I also have a "Net Adapter 1394 Connection" located next to the Local Area Connection and when I try to repair it I get:

Windows could not finish repairing the problem because the following action cannot be completed: TCP/IP is not enabled for this connection. Cannot proceed.

Like I said I have no idea what any of this means. I've tried copying numbers down from the computer that has the Internet, but that doesn't work, especially the IP address which is listed on that computer as being something that starts with 72.240 etc., but sometimes when I enter that I get a message stating that my IP address has to be in a range like 123-200 or something like that.

Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated and thank any or all of you in advance. I'll try to respond to your questions ASAP. Thanks again.
 
First off you can ignore the 1394 network adapter in the network connections menu that is just for your firewire port.

As for your local area connection it appears it is not obtaining any address inforrmation from the router (based on the diagnostic information you posted)

Couple different things to check here, first would be to ensure your connections to the router are good, cable plugged in on both ends, connection light on both ends. After this if you know how to connect to your router and access the setup page you may want to do that from your friends computer that is working and see if DHCP is enabled on the router. This allows the router to send out necessary information to each computer connected to it.

The other thing you could do is check your friends computer to see if he has it confirgured for a static IP or Dynamic. My guess is he has a manually or 'static' configured IP. Go to his network connections, right click on his local area connection and go to properties. In the window that pop's up select TCP/IP from the list of items then click on properties.

There it will have one of two checkboxes selected either configure manually or obtain an address automatically. If it's set as automatic I'm not sure why the other computers on your network wouldn't also be getting the address information from the router like his computer is, unless you have some type of filtering enabled on the router.

If it is set as Manually Configured then you have a couple options, you can either enable DHCP on the router so it will automaticall hand out addresses to the other computers, or you can go back to your PC and enter the info manually like it's shown on his. For Ip address he would probably have something like 192.168.1.100 or 192.168.0.100 ... on your PC you would want to put in something with the first 3 numbers the same but the last number different and between .2 and .255, the gateway, subnet mask and DNS information would be the same.

Sorry for the long response, hope that helps if you have any other questions post back, I'm sure some others will chime in with ideas also.
 
i am not completely sure what all of that means either, but here is a few things to try

first on your router make sure the internet is connected to a WAN or uplink port demending on what the router has

than make sure all your computers (you and your friends) are just connected to normal slots in the router

than on each of the machines go to network places, should be accessible from my computer and than either as a link on the left hand side or by clicking the up arrow on the top toolbar

than there should be a red house icon (setup my network or something) click on that and go through it
the important thing here is to choose the second opition of (3?) my computer connects through a residential gateway or through another computer or something a long those lines

after completing that you should be good to go since all machines run XP
you may wish to restart the machines afterwards too, but that shouldnt be necessary

also just some other things to test with are:
go into command prompt either windows + R or start->all programs->accessiblitys->command prompt and try these commands

ping www.yahoo.com or ping www.google.com this will by default ping yahoo or google 4 times and present you with if the ping (you sending a packet and then recieveing a packet) was successful or not if all 4 work you are probably good to go
also you can add the -n count parameter on the end ex. ping -n 20 www.yahoo.com to ping 20 times to get a more accurate reading
ipconfig will list your ipaddress and other useful information
ipconfig /release will release your ipaddress and
ipconfig /renew will renew it i would only use these 2 if the above way through the red house as failed

though using the ping is safe and is a good way to see if you have internet and for how long if your internet seems to work than not work etc

hope this helps

clark
 
The router model # is DI-604. How do I find out if all machines are pulling DHCP address? I pretty sure mine isn't because it doesn't have a message saying it is. I tried the ping options but they didn't work. I know I'm not receiving any packets if that helps.

For the computer the Internet works for in the status pane it says that the IP address is being assigned by DHCP, but the IP address is listed as 72.240.101.124 and not one beginning with a 100 #. My IP addresss is listed as starting with 169. Keep the questions coming. I hope I'm helping.

Thanks again for all your responses.
 
On the computer the Internet works:


IP Address: 72.240.101.124
Subnet Mask: 255.255.252.0
Default Gateway: 72.240.100.1
 
Alright it would appear your friends computer is pulling a public IP address. First verify you have everything cabled correctly.

You should have a network cable running from the cable modem to the WAN port on the DLink router. Then each of your client machines should be plugged into one of the 4 user ports on the router.

If all that is correct which I'm assuming it is, then you have a problem with the configuration of the router. Sounds like it is setup to be just a pass through and not actually act as a router, it is taking the address the cable modem has and giving it to your friends computer, instead of using that address for the router and giving each of the computers on your network its own address.

Easy way to fix this would be make sure all the client machines are setup for DHCP (obtain an IP address automatically). Then perform a factory reset on the router, should be able to find info on how to do this in the manual. After that and the router is up and running try power cycling the client machines, they should pull a private DHCP ip address from the dlink router (something like 192.168.1.101 or something to that effect) and at that point you should all have internet, and also should be able to access the routers managment page which should be at 192.168.1.1

-Matt
 
All the computers are plugged into the router in a numbered port.
The router is then plugged into the cable modem through the port that is separate from the numbered ones.

However, when we mess around with router/modem/etc. and the Internet goes out for all of us, the guy whose computer gets the Internet goes and plugs his cable direct into the modem for awhile until he gets the Internet back and then plugs it back into the router and it works for him and, but still for noone else.

The link to the router revisions wouldn't open but I checked and it says H/W revision - E3 and F/W revision - 3.51.
 
When you checked the computer that is working - and posted the address information that is above, was it hooked up to the router - and the router hooked to the cable modem, and working at that time?

If so your router is not setup to 'route' per-say, it is not performing whats called NAT (or PAT). Generally what a router does is takes your one public address that your ISP (comcast, time warner, etc) provides, and lets multiple computers use it, the router takes the public address and gives your home computers 'private addresses' For whatever reason the router is not doing this and is just handing that one public address off to that computer thats working, when any other machine trys to get online it asks for an IP, however the cable modem only has one to give.

I still reccomend restoring the router to the factory defaults, setting your clients to obtain an IP automatically, and power cycling everything, my bet is that will solve your problems.
 
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