e740 w/ already existing 801.11b infrastructure help...

[darkroom]

Hi,

I have a Linksys wireless access point, with two notebooks with wireless 802.11 cards that work perfectly. I have an existing 100M Ethernet network, with a DHCP Cable router and cable modem...

I have been unable to get the e740 to get on the Internet. I've tried to let it use DHCP to get an address, like ALL the other 8 computers do with no problem, but it gets some crazy address that is out of bounds...so I tried hard addressing things....and I can get it ping'd from another computer...though unreliably... I have no WINS or DNS set on ANY computer here, so I would hope the e740 doesn't need any either...

Anyone know why I get the crazy DHCP address? Any ideas on why I can't get this device to get out the cable modem? I have installed no software on any PC for this, as I can't understand why I would need to, as I don't plan on synchronizing anything with any desktop...

Any help would be appreciated.

Austin Franklin
[email protected]

[Win]

I have a similar setup with similar equipment. A couple of things to check. Your router/AP may have a setting in the setup utility that allows you to specify the maximum number of DHCP clients that can connect at one time. Make sure it is set high enough to accomodate the number of PC's on your network.

On the e740, go to Settings, Connections and make sure the three drop down menus use the following settings: Work Settings, Internet Settings, Internet Settings.

You should not have to assign an IP address, but just use DHCP as you are doing. Go into Settings and select Wireless LAN Utility. See if you have a signal from your AP. Check Link Quality under the Config tab. Make sure you are set to Infrastructure Mode and that the SSID is on the default of ANY (until you get things working). Hit the Advanced tab and make sure WEP Mode is set to Disable (until you get it working). Hit the Scan tab and see if you can see the access point.

Hopefully one of these things will get it working. It's pretty cool to surf the net from anywhere in the house with this little thing. Next project is to be able to run Active Sync over the wireless connection. I've read it is possible, but have not gotten that working yet.

[darkroom]

Thanks for the suggestions. I decided to try to check the number of DHCP clients allowed, and couldn't log into the router...so I suspected that it may be a router problem...so I reset it, and could log in after the reset. I have 50 clients set, so that shouldn't be a problem. I then tried the wireless, and it now gets a correct DHCP address...so the problem was the router not assigning the correct addresses.

I can now browse...but...it's REALLY SLOW!!! I mean REALLY SLOW. I have 500k cable modem, and my regular browser on a desktop works quite fast...as do my wireless notebooks... Any suggestions for speed increasing? Does yours work reasonably fast?

Thanks again!

[Win]

My wireless connection is very fast. I've got a cable modem too, and web pages load on the Toshiba about as fast as on my desktop pc's.

If you have WEP encryption turned on, that cuts the throughput of the Linksys router/AP by 50% according to the reviews I have read. The router will drop back from 11 mbs to 1 depending on signal strength, but since even the slowest speed is faster than your cable modem connection, that should not be the culprit. You can disable WEP on the router and Toshiba to see if it makes a difference.

You can see in the Wireless Utility what your connection speed is if you want to check that. If it is a very marginal connection from an RF signal standpoint, the connection might appear slow due to packet loss over the RF link. The solution there would be to play with the router location to ensure that you get enough signal to the Toshiba.

If you don't have encryption turned on, I'm not sure what it could be. Some routers apparently don't suffer the throughput hit with encryption turned on that Linksys does.

[darkroom]

WEP is turned on, but it is also on on my notebooks, and they work just fine.

I have never gotten consistent pings with the e740...I'm lucky if I get one out of four...and even near the AP, I only get %50-%60 signal in the third tab (or is it the fourth...not the bar graph, but the one that shows the access point), and typically %12 from some 50 feet away. But, as I said, my notebooks work perfectly.

I'll have to do some testing...perhaps switching channels on the AP might help???

[darkroom]

I decided to check for upgrades for the WAP11....and there was one, so I upgraded the WAP11, and in doing so, it switched to channel 10 (from 3)...but my e740 rate went way up, and though it's not as fast as my desktop, it isn't bad. It also seems a LOT more reliable.

I don't know if it was the channel change, or the firmware upgrade...but it's working fine now.

Thanks for your help!

[Win]

Glad the performance picked up. I went through each channel on my AP manually and noted the signal strength on the e740. Some channels did seem to have better signal strength than others. I ended up setting the AP to use something other than the default of channel 6.