I have a few networking questions/problems

My brother got a laptop the other day and i have been having some trouble setting it up with our existing wireless network. I have a laptop that is about 3 years old and a D-Link wireless router. I could get my brothers laptop to connect to the router but if he turned the laptop off then back on, it would fail to reconnect. It seems to be working now but i'm not really sure why.
See bottom of post for technical details. I will add details if necessary and when i am able (i.e. if i'm not at work).

I am no expert when it comes to networking, it's not really my thing. So i have a few questions which i am not sure if they are a problem.

Firstly, what could be the problem with my brother's laptop? A while ago i was having trouble with my laptop's connection and found that updating it's wireless card driver. Would doing the same with my brother's help?

Second, i have noticed that the DNS Suffix is "domain.invalid". Is that bad? I don't really know what that means so please indicate how i can elaborate on that so you guys can better diagnose the problem.

Third, i was also trying to set up file sharing between both computers. I eventually figured out that i had to allow it in Norton's firewall, but when googling i read that i should set each laptop's ip (i.e. static) as 192.168.0.x. But when i did that i could no longer access the internet. What's the difference between static and dynamic and why the difference?

Details:
Wireless router: D-Link DI-524 802.11g
My laptop: OS: Windows XP SP3, Wireless card: Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG
Brother's laptop: OS: Windows Vista (Home Premium i think), i'll check the hardware specs when i get the chance

 

Your bros computer was unable to connect automatically either because you didn't save the settings to automatically connect to this network when in range.
this massage is always displayed when connecting for the first time to a wireless Network, it can recur if you didn't save this settings.

with the DNS query read for your self in the link below.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc779380(WS.10).aspx

With the File Sharing, you don't need to set static IP to share a file, so long all your computers are connected to the same LAN (whether using Static or automatic IP)using DCHP server.
All you need to do is set both computers to be under the same Work group, then enable file sharing, and give it share names in both PC, if you are able to see the other computer in your network places, under view work groups, then you should be able to share any thing including a printer with easy.
anything that you need to share right click and choose 'sharing and security' then select the option 'share this folder on the network' and give it a share name, you can as well select the option 'Allow network users to change my files' too (in case you need to update your files from any computer within your LAN)

Good Luck

Victornous

 

That was one of the first things i did! I'm not quite sure what i did now but i know that after the first time it didn't reconnect, i ticked "connect even if not in range" or something along those lines. It seems to connect every time now so that may have been it, but the network should always be visible to the laptop since the router is only ~5 meters away in another room.
Also, it kept trying to connect to an unnamed network even when it said it was connected to "default" (our network).

I will have a read of that but if the answer to my question is just a simple "yes, it's bad and you need to fix it" or "no, it's no big deal" then that will help me gauge how serious it is. I'm not saying that i am lazy and do not want to read that technet article, i'm just saying that my knowledge in that area is lacking so it will take me a while to learn it all.

Yeah, i did all that. The only reason why it wasn't working is the Norton firewall as i mentioned earlier. I was just curious why some sites/forums said to use a static ip.

Thanks for your help Victornous.

 

The choice of using DHCP to set IP addresses or manually setting static ones is usually down to personal choice or sometimes necessary through hardware requirements. Use of DHCP (should) eliminate may easy-to-miss errors though. For instance you shouldn't really manually set an IP to 192.168.0.1 as this is used by the host of a Windows ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) "network". Likewise you shouldn't really use 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.2.1 as these are often used by routers (and most router manufacturers should know not to use 192.168.0.1 because of Windows ICS too)

Using a static IP is usually good for troubleshooting, to make sure each machine has an individual IP address and is not being incorrectly assigned one (by DHCP) thats already in use. Mixing the two, DHCP assigned and static IPs, can sometimes lead to trouble though. Imagine you have manually set your computer to use 192.168.2.2 but it is not switched on. Then your brother comes along, switches on his computer and, the router, not seeing any other computer using 192.168.2.2, gives HIS computer that IP address. Now when you switch on your computer you'll have problems accessing your network (and thus the internet) because "your" IP address is already in use.

If you're lucky your router may check the MAC ID of your brothers computer, see its not the computer that usually uses 192.168.2.2 and assign him another IP (but I don't think there are many routers that do that or at least do it by default!).

If you're (slightly less) lucky your computer may tell you the IP address your computer uses is already in use and either ask you to change it yourself or will offer to change it for you.

If the router or your computer does neither of these things you'd have to figure out the problem yourself.

Hope that helps a little... or even at all!

Shades

 

My apologies, I got something wrong in my post :-o (and then ran up against the MajorGeeks 10 minute post edit time limit!)

Its the above quote, specifically the bit in brackets, that messed things up. For clarity it should read:

"If you're lucky your router may "lease" IP addresses for a specific period of time. In which case, the router would check the MAC ID of your brothers computer and compare it with the MAC ID of the computer that has (recently) been using 192.168.2.2 (which should be your computers MAC ID). As long as the lease for 192.168.2.2 has not yet expired the router should give his machine a different IP address and you should be able to connect as normal"

Again, my apologies. I was thinking of something else :-o... but it is 4:17am after all!

Shades

 

Oh, MajorGeeks has a 10 min edit limit? Damn, now i can't go back and fill in the detail in my first post. My intention was to edit the post when i checked the specs of my brother's computer. That's why i don't like these time limits that some boards put in place.

Anyway, back on topic, thanks for the explanation DJshadesUK. It helped a bit . I think probably the only reason why i couldn't connect to the internet when i tried using a static ip is that i only tried it with my laptop, i didn't configure anything with the router. I thought i may have had to but i didn't bother since DHCP works fine so i will stick with it.
Also, that bit you said about "leasing" IP addresses makes more sense to me now. I always wondered why it says "Lease expires" in the network connection details dialog. Now i see that it simply means that when the time is up the router will automatically assign a new ip address to my laptop, is that right? And i suppose that is useful so you don't get ip clashes if another device tries to connect to the network at any time.
Like i said, networking is not really my thing, so you will have to forgive me if i have got it all wrong

 

Really you shouldn't have had to change anything on your router. When you set the static IP address did you also set the "Default Gateway" and "Preferred DNS" addresses? (Both of which are absolutely required and, if using a router, are usually the same)

For instance:

Code:

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-21-63-96-E1-72
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.2 [B]<- My computers IP[/B]
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1 [B]<- My routers IP[/B]
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1 [B]<- My routers IP[/B]

As you can see, the above has been set statically (DHCP enabled = no) and I'm still posting this to MajorGeeks!

Err, sort of not quite! :-D

Say the IP lease period of your router is 48 hours, the IP assigned to your computer (as identified by the MAC ID or "Physical Address") is reserved for your computers use for 48 hours. If, after the 48 hour period, your computer has not connected to the router it will place that IP back into the IP "pool" ready to be assigned again (which may, or may not, be your computer).

So, in my case, my computer (00-21-63-96-E1-72) would have the IP "192.168.2.2" reserved for 48 hours. However, this is where static IPs can be troublesome. You may notice I don't have DHCP enabled. If I were to not use my computer for 48 hours another computer, with DHCP enabled, may be assigned with "192.168.2.2" meaning when I do use my computer I won't be able to connect to the router and, most importantly, won't be able to reach the internet! :cry

One detail I am sketchy about though is whether the lease is a rolling lease or if it is just for a finite period of time. In other words does the lease renew itself every time it encounters the same computer, or does it, once assigned, run the full 48 hours before being re-issued? (If the latter is the case then I imagine if your computer is using a certain IP when the lease expires it is automatically re-issued with the lease and its then runs for another full 48 hours).

I could re-enable DHCP on my computer and check how long the lease actually lasts for and how it is renewed but its 7:57am here in Blighty and this Pom has yet to get some sleep! LOL

No worries! We all have to start somewhere and getting things wrong occasionally is just par for the course. Hey, even I get things wrong... but don't tell the missus I said that!! Haha

Shades

 

Hi again. My brother is still having problems with his internet connection. Every time (of most times) he turn on his laptop, it says in the network section of the control panel that it is connected to "Unidentified network" and he cannot connect. But when i check the available wireless networks it lists "default" as the first one and says it's connected. There are a few other networks in range, probably from neighbours, but "default" is my D-Link router.
I can disconnect from "default" and reconnect to it and everything will work. He also said that it will eventually fix itself up after about half an hour. I did a bit of "research" (i.e. google ) and found a few solutions which may have half worked. One thing i did was to disable IPv6 because i read that it may not play nice with the router. I also tried this but it didn't work.
Does anyone have any other ideas? Has anyone else had this specific problem (there are a lot of posts on other forums about similar issues but they are all slightly different. Just goes to show you how much of a bitch it is to setup networking)?
I can provide any more information if you need it.

 

Do you have the Intel Proset connection software active also?
This may be causing some problems with conflicts between Intel's app and Windows. Only 1 connection app should be active.
Either quit the Intel app by right clicking the tray icon and quit(disable) or stop the WZC service in Administrative Tools, Services.

 

Ok, i have no idea what you just said but i do know that my laptop uses Intel Proset, although i don't know what it does, and the Zero Config service is running. I'm not sure if my brother's laptop uses it but it might, i will check tomorrow.
What do you mean by "only 1 connection app should be active"? On each computer or on the entire local network? Also, what exactly does the WZC do and do i even need it?

 

You should have only the 1 connection app on a single computer controlling the wireless connection for that computer. If you have 2 apps trying to control the connection, you can have conflicts.
WZC refers to the Wireless Zero Cofiguration which is the Windows service that runs to control the connection. You may not be using it, but if it is started in Windows services, the underlying process can cause conflicts with another application like the Proset sometimes.
Here's some info on it - http://www.ezlan.net/wzc.html

 

I still don't fully understand you. So you are saying that on each computer there should only be one app that controls the connection. You kinda confused me by saying single computer because i thought you meant either my or my brother's computer, but you mean one app on mine and one on my brother's, right?
I was sort of thinking the same thing, that a 3rd party app such as Intel could be messing with Windows native wireless services. My laptop had some Intel b.s. that is used to manage wireless networks but i disabled it because it was mainly for roaming and i only use the wireless network in our house. I would have also disabled the WZC but i read mixed reviews about it; some said it was needed, others said the opposite.
I also noticed the other day that my brother's pc uses some pre-installed HP wireless management app and thought that it could be causing the issues. Do you think it could? I might try disabling it today and see if that helps.

 

An individual computer should have only 1 application to control it's separate wireless connection to the router. So 1 app per computer is correct.
The HP software may be causing conflicts on the other comp, so disabling it would be my advice.

 

I'm sorry but you are going to have to explain in more detail, as i said before i don't know a whole lot about networking. Now, you say the HP software may be causing conflicts on the other comp, do you mean to say that the HP software on my brother's computer may cause conflicts on my computer? If so then that is incorrect. My computer is fine, it's my brother's computer, the one with the HP software, that is having problems. And as i said before, both computers are not always turned on so it is not possible that one computer could affect the other's connection.
I would turn off the HP software but i'm not sure how to check if that is the cause. The laptop only fails to connect once it's started so i can't just kill the process, i would have to disable the service, and i'm not sure what effect that will have.

 

Oh, i forgot to mention that the WZC thing on my computer is running as "ZCfgSvc.exe" on my computer and the description says "Intel PROSet/Wireless Zero Config Service". Is that the same as Windows Zero Configuration? Is it a Windows service or an Intel one?

 

That is the Intel service and is not the same as the windows service.

Each computer controls it's own connection to the router. The wireless app on each individual comp does not conflict with the app on the other comp.
My home network has 4 available wireless computers with 2 using the XP windows app, 1 using the Intel Proset and 1 using the Vista or Win7 wireless service and they happily get along.