TubeNet

or something.

I don't understand the cause of this situation, but I have one idea. In my living situation, one person turns off the computer which is essentially the "master" of the router. For some reason, that seems to shut off wireless connectivity too. It makes no sense to me. Further, one other machine in the house is wired to that router, and it works all the time, no matter what.
Running another wired connection is possible but impractical. SO...can I put a wireless into the wired connection to the PC that doesn't necessarily get turned off?

IOW....


Router (wired to a PC which gets turned off regularly, and cuts off wireless with it)

--------------------------->router---------------> wireless and wired connections

will that work?

somehow I doubt it. But I'm willing to ask.

steve

This sounds like a settings problem. What kind of router are you using?

Does your internet cable run straight into the router or into the "master computer" and then the router?

Sadly, I wish I knew the answer to either question, but that person is gone for an extended period. The PC is used by someone else very rarely, I guess, and I'm new enough to not know that whole story. It's a weird situation in some ways, great in many.

It does seem like the router is after the "master" PC, but why would the wired connection work?

Thanks. I'll have to figure something out somehow.

If the router is after the "master" PC in the chain of wires, then turning off the computer would indeed sever the internet connection from the wall to the router. The PC would have internet access, but be unable to relay it to the router while turned off. If this is indeed the case and you feel comfortable doing it, the connection from the wall should be connected directly to the router, with another cable connecting it to the PC. That way, everything would act as normal, except that the router will have internet connection when the PC is turned off. Don't worry about messing things up, switching wires around is easy enough and will not cause any sort of damage.

I THINK I know what you have happening...perhaps. Here's how your layout SHOULD look.


[DSL/CABLE modem]--ethernet cable-->[WAN port on Router]
You should now be supplying internet connectivity to everything that can connect to that router. (I'm assuming you have the router properly configured for your ISP)


Now you can plug in your other computers in the LAN ports or use wifi for access

Make sure your router is set to handle DHCP (ie enable the DHCP server option). This way when your computers (all set to using DHCP) try to access your network, your router will automatically hand them out an ip address, gateway info and DNS server. I highly recommend using the following IP for DNS: 208.67.220.220. It's a very widely used and fast public DNS server.

Make sure that if the IP of your router is 192.168.1.1 that all of your computers are using that as the gateway. That will ensure that all traffic is going through the router and not some other device/computer on your network. From a Windows machine you can open up the command line and run... You will then get something like this....
(other stuff trimmed out)

ip address: 192.168.1.10
gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS Server: 208.67.220.220

On a Mac, Apple+system preferences+network+(appropriate connection) it should say DHCP and actually show you this same information. On a Mac it says "router" instead of gateway.

I hope that helps.

OK ... let's simplify this.

Assuming your DSL or cable modem DOES NOT have an integrated router, there should be four cables:

the first cable should run from the DSL/cable jack on the wall to the matching jack on the modem;

the second cable should run from the Ethernet port on modem to the WAN port on the wireless router;

the third cable should run from current "master" computer to one of the LAN ports on the wireless router;

the fourth cable should run from the other computer that's currently wired to the router to one of the LAN ports on the wireless router.

-----

Assuming your DSL/cable modem DOES have an integrated router, there should be three cables:

the first cable should run from the DSL/cable jack on the wall to the matching jack on the modem;

the second cable should run from current "master" computer to one of the LAN ports on the router;

the third cable should run from the other computer that's currently wired to the router to one of the LAN ports on the router.

Steve,

A couple of questions for you...

- Are you able to connect to the wireless with a good signal, but just not able to access the internet?
- Can you connect your computer to the router with a wired connection temporarily just to prove that your computer will talk to the router and access the internet (get an IP address, gateway, DNS servers, etc)?
- Did you have to do anything special to get your computer on the wireless in the first place when it was first set up?

To the other geeks:

I am wondering possibly the "master computer" is acting as a DHCP server or a router itself and the other wired computer that works is on a static IP and pointing at the true router. Finding out what each machine says with an ipconfig /all would be the most helpful thing, especially the DHCP Enabled (yes/no) and DHCP server might be.

Keep us posted!