06.18.05

Router problems finally solved.

Posted in computers at 2:47 am by Haris

I’ve had for quite some time problems with my router, a Netgear WGR614v4. At first it used to work pretty well with an XP desktop wired and an iBook G4 connected wirelessly, except that, first, most windows laptops could not connect to it wirelessly, and it my laptop did not connect to it for a while, it would sort of disable the wireless, so I would have to reboot the router every day. Not really a problem, just a bit irritating. Main problem is, that because of the almost complete lack of support from Netgear, it took a while to find the answers I needed. Then at some point it dawned on me to do a firmware upgrade. That improved things considerably, in the sense that windows laptops could now connect to it remotely. Unfortunately, it had a nasty side-effect for the connection dropping almost constantly. So then I followed what I have now come to realize is an essential part of procedure involved in any such change:

• Cycle the router (you know, the button on the back that you must hold for 10-15 seconds).
• Cycle the router again (yes, I am not kidding, just do it).
• Turn off the computers, the router and the modem.
• Turn on the modem, and wait until it comes up completely, usually no more than half a minute, probably much less.
• Turn on the router, and wait until it comes up completely, usually no more than half a minute, probably much less.
• Turn on the computers, and point your web browser to 192.168.0.1 to set up the router. Don’t forget to change your password!
• Things should now be back to normal.

In this particular case, there was a further first step, involving setting my modem, the SBC Speedstream 5100b, to some particular state. Luckily, after a while I realized this was described in the Netgear support page.

Then one of my roommates could not get her desktop to connected through an ethernet cable. That took a while to fix also, since it turned out we needed to upgrade the driver for the ethernet card she had. Try downloading a driver with no internet connection in the first place… Anyway, I downloaded the driver from the department’s computers onto a floppy drive, and then installed it and tried to connect. No go. The weird thing is that the way it was failing is that it was showing that the card was not connected to the router, as if the cable was loose or something, which for a while kept me away from the real answer which is, yes you guessed it, cycle the router! After that things are now back to normal, great speed, the world couldn’t be better. Hurray!

This is not a bad router really, does its work for its price, but troubleshooting is a bit of a pain sometimes.

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