Limited or no connectivity, I hate you

A

adamadekat

Gawd
Joined
Aug 12, 2004
Messages
527
For some reason I can't connect to my school's wireless, and I never have been able to. All I get is "Limited or no connectivity". The signal strength is always Excellent. I just updated my drivers and the same thing it's still happening... this also happens back home. The only places I can connect to without a problem are my frat house and random locations.

Help please...
 
Well, it depends on the wireless setup at the locations you are having issues with. WPA1/2? They could be doing MAC filtering ( unlikely ), or even certificate based auth.

Share this data and we can help you.
 
It is an open wireless network... that's all I know. There are no passwords needed. EVERYONE else here can connect instantly without a problem...
 
Have you enabled DHCP, If you cant get an IP address for any reason then you will get that error, trust me I know.
 
Well does it give you an IP ?

Sounds like your not getting an IP hence the 'excellent' signal strength yet windows cant use the connection as you have no IP.

This could be for all sorts of reasons MAC filtering being one of them
 
Have you tried setting your wireless to only connect to infrastructure networks? I work in the IT dept at my college and a bunch of students have set up a "rogue" network using the same name as our main network. Therefore, when students try to connect, often times they choose the wrong network and connect to this "rogue" P2P network. The fake network is pretty much dead and they'll get the "Limited or no connectivity" even though they have a signal.

While it's a shot in the dark, I'd enable "infrastructure only" for now, just eliminate this possibility.

Also, what app are you using to manage your connections? The default windows one, or a suite that came with your laptop? Believe it or not, from my experience, the Windows wireless connection manager has been the best wireless manager I've used. The other connection managers such as IBM's, HP's, Intel, etc... I found they don't always do that great of a job holding or establishing a connection.
 
Yep, I support wireless for a large cable company and we offer wireless solutions to our customer and windows is the best one.

Usually to fix limited or no connectivity on wireless, I reinstall network adapters drivers. A lot of times its either the OS or the wireless network blocking your connection like some type of security in place or MAC filtering. Theres not much else that will cause limited or no connectivity on a wireless network.
 
what's helped me in the past is assigning a manual IP address (find out the subnet first) then ping the gateway to make sure it works. Then turn on DHCP, 3 of 4 times that fixes my problem and DHCP is successful.
 
I enabled "Infrastructure only" and uninstalled and updated to the most recent drivers... I also tried that sockxp utility and none of this is working... any other suggestions?
 
I used to get this same problem constantly with my ralink RT2500 card, sometimes still do even with my AP 3 feet away from me... Occasionaly my handheld PC with an Orinoco card does it as well, though its error message is different... Its still the same problem.

My previous ISP used 802.11, I was probably 1-1.5 miles from their AP. Signal strength would be decent, -65-70dbm, though the damn card would either not show any access points or networks in netstumbler or the cards utility, or it would constantly say Limited or No connectivity. If I assigned it a static IP, which my ISP gave me and checked to make sure it wasnt in use, windows would say there is a network address conflict when there was none. At first I thought my windows install (4 months old) was screwed up. I re-installed XP SP2, not even within 5-10 minutes of having it installed and online with the wifi based internet, windows would throw the network address conflict or limited/no connectivity at me.

Tried reinstalling my drivers, checked with my ISP many times making sure nothing was wrong... Switching to a parabolic home-made antenna (small satellite dish) which helped, but by far switching to a 200mW radio with a real antenna was what fixed the problem. I now have that 200mW Wifi bridge/antenna mounted up on a roof, -50dbm at 1-1.5 miles, 11mb/sec... though the whole mess cost about $150.00. Theoretically a pair of these should be able to make a usable connection up to about 10 miles, if all is well.

Another thing to keep in mind, even if your Wifi NIC is connected and showing a good signal, does not mean you actually have a good connection. For example, my ISP used 200mW Tranzeo AP's with a 15db antenna, mounted on a tower. My wifi card was 30mW, using about a 6db or 9db antenna at best (home-made tincan setup), sitting inside facing a wall in my house pointed in the general direction of my ISP.

Comminucation is a two-way process, from your computers point of view it may have a very strong connection, but from the AP's point of view, it may have a very poor signal. At my apartment, my 100mw access point with its reguar antenna, no gain.. I can get anywhere from -20 to -30 anywhere in my apartment, which is damn good. Stepping outside with my handheld, netstumbler open... walking 10 feet down to the parking area, the signal... if it can even detect it... is rarely above -90dbm. Cement, wooden walls, parked cars.. Hell, Ive been close enough to my AP that I could touch it, and sometimes both my orinoco and Ralink wont even detect it, either because of murphies law, or because the AP a peice of junk belkin that needs to be burned, and replaced with something more suitable.

Just make sure your near the AP when trying, and I dont mean 2-3 rooms away, I mean physically near it to where you can visually see it.

If you can, download ethereal and install it
Bring your laptop near the AP, make sure its connected
Tell Ethereal to start capturing on the wifi interface, promiscous mode disabled.
Go to start -> run, type CMD and hit enter
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

Ethereal should show if its actually trying to get an IP from DHCP or not. Just now, my damn ralink was telling me limited or no connectivity to my access point, which has been on for no more than 2 minutes... which is also about 3 feet away. Sigh... I hate wifi at times like this.

If all goes well, failed DHCP request or not, you should see something like this:
Ethereal Screenshot

DHCP Discover, DHCP offer, DHCP Request, and DHCP ACK should show up as the first few things.
 
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