Wireless help, expert needed?!!!

[DesignPunk]

Hiya

I'm having trouble setting up the father in law's wireless router and I've exhausted all my knowledge!

He has the following:

A Motorola SurfBoard 4100 Broadband Modem
A Belkin Wireless G Router (54g?)
A Dell pc which runs fine

So... I ran the install wizard and it didn't find the router after following all the instructions. So, after a bit of investigation it turns out that the modem is connected to the PC via USB, however it also has an ethernet connection on the back which we used for the install. Also, it mentions in the Belkin manual that this should be fine. I found that the ethernet port on the back of his PC was turned off so I turned it back on as usual using hardware management from the system properties dialog.

Having done this I ran the wizard again and it configured the router fine,however, once the router was configured the wizard tried to find an internet presence. It couldn't. So, I tested the connection and sure enough it wasn't getting through. I turned off the ethernet port again and IE/FF worked fine, accessed the net perfectly.

Now this leads me to believe that the Motorola Modem turned off the ethernet port during the install procedure and the USB/Ethernet can't work together.

Now, I've tried every variation on that I can think of, such as just using ethernet for the net and taking out the USB, but it still won't find a net presence on the Belkin Router install wizard. And, the net will only work when the ethernet is off and the modem is connected via USB.

It seems to me that the modem can only work on usb, in which case the router's a load of tosh for that setup and the easiest solution is to call Blueyonder and get an ethernet modem instead.

I've called Belkin's free support line but couldn't get thru!

Any help would be massively appreciated!!!

Cheers!
Mark

 

[KDF]

Nah, you need to get rid of the USB crap and use the network port..

If your are using Telewest/Blueyonder which if its a Surfboard 4100 im pretty sure it will be then you need to

power off the modem for a while (say 30 min)
plug the network lead from the cable modem into the wan port on your router
plug the router into your computer
access the router via its inbuilt webserver and force a DHCP refresh on the router so the router now has the valid external IP address
the router also needs to be setup to issue any computers connecting to it an IP which you can do by setting up the DHCP server on the router, you probably wont need more than 10 IP's in the DHCP IP Pool.

Remember to completly uninstall all the software for the USB connection before doing any of the above though.

BTW What speed of connection are you on (Upload/Download) in Mbit ?


You used to have to phone up telewest in order to add/remove mac addresses from the cable modem, but its supposed to self learn new mac's, but for some reason it can take a while. I find it helps if you manually release the DHCP IP from the cable modem before starting the above procedure.

 

[DesignPunk]

Cheers.

All i know is it's a 4mb line as far as speed in concerned.

I'm guessing that I'll be able to get to the router control panel once the router is configured to use the network port by typing the ip into a browser?

Also, there doesn't seem to be any software as such for the usb connection, least i cant find any in the add/remove software screen.

 

[KDF]

The reason I asked the speed is if you were on 10mbit you shouldnt be using the surfboard 4100. 4mb is fine though.

Ye, once you hook up the router reboot your pc (you shouldnt need to but if it doesnt work try it) then find out your router's default ip (usualy 192.168.1.1 or something along those lines) You will also be able to configure the wireless part of the router with encryption/keys etc.

Did you use the disc that came with the modem.. the telewest one.. if so remove it all.. you dont need any telewest software or any crap like that on your comp.

 

[DesignPunk]

Cheers mate, I'll give it a whirl! I'm crap at stuff like this!