802.11B Problem 1

[Haunted]

Hi all,

I am sitting in an office which has an apple airport network. The trouble is that 3 of the computers in the office are macs, and the other 2 are PC laptops. The macs have no problems with the airport connection, but us poor PC users are having a real issue getting a connection.

Yesterday I bought 2 D-link AirPlus DWL-650+ PCMCIA cards for the laptops, then installed the utilities and drivers. So far so good. Connected in to the network, readout is Signal Strenth:99%, Link Quality: 75-100%. But for the life of me, I cannot get on the internet via this connection. In fact nothing works apart from the seemingly teasing "good" connection which I am getting.

The base station (airport) is connected directly to an ADSL connection, not to one of the macs. all the macs have airport cards in them - no direct connection.

All macs using OSX

One PC is running WIN98SE and the other is WINXP.

I have tried using dynamic and static IP's, and it has had no discernible effect...

Please HELP! as nothing I have tried including playing with TCP/IP settings and DNS settings has done any good.

Thanks in advance.

 

[daronwilson]

Well it sounds like most of what you are dealing with is basic network troubleshooting.

1. Confirm your PC has a valid ip address. If you are set to DHCP and you don't get a valid IP address, windows will give you the bogus 169.x.x.x to fill the hole, but it won't help you much. Run ipconfig or winipcfg and see what your IP address is. Open up a command prompt and ping your own IP address. Also, ping 127.0.0.0 (loopback). If both of these get you responses, we can assume your NIC is working. If not, you either have an installation issue with your NIC and/or drivers, protocol binding, etc.

2. Confirm DNS and gateway ip addresses. With the winipcfg or ipconfig you should see that you have DNS server addresses, also you should see what your default gateway is set to. I'm not familiar with the airport, but assuming it has a mini-router built in your gateway ip address should probably be that of the airport. If that is not the case, perhaps you have a firewall between the DSL modem and your LAN and that may be the gateway address. So, ping the airport IP address. If you get a good response, your wireless lan is getting you there. If you can't ping the airport, you may have an association/authentication issue with the wireless LAN.

3. Check settings of the machines that do work. See what their gateway and DNS settings are and make sure yours are the same.

Lot's of things you can look for, but I would start there and see if you can nail down where the area of problem is.

Good Luck! It is only my opinion, based on my experience and education...I am always willing to learn, educate me!
Daron J. Wilson, RCDD
daron.wilson@lhmorris.com