Linksys wireless router issues.. won't redistribute IP to laptop

[Duncour]

I have a linksys wireless router at home that I have my p4 desktop system and my HP laptop hooked to (wirelessly for the laptop of course, the desktop is hardwired in). Every time my roomy leaves for the weekend to stay with her boyfriend and she takes her HP laptop with her and she comes back on Monday, it won't give her an IP address and it won't connect to our home network. Sometimes it will connect but not at full strength and she still can't ping anything or surf the web.

When she goes to her bf's house over the weekend, she connects to his wireless network and everything works fine. It's just when she comes back to our house that it gets stupid. I assigned her IP address to her so it would not just try to pick it up and that still doesn't work. It will get her back up and running, but when she comes back I have to remove it and add it again.

Any solutions? What am I missing?

I have set up the router to only assign 2 IP addresses. When she comes back home for the first time, she gets some strange IP address that I have no clue where it is coming from. She can also connect to our neighbor's wireless server but she can't connect to ours until I go back in and give her the IP manually.

Thanks!

 

[CopyJockey]

I would allow the router to assign more IP addresses or be sure to encrypt you wireless signal. If you only have 2 available IP addresses, somone could be leeching the 2nd one which leaves 0 for your roomie.

 

[Duncour]

Hmm... this is true. Glad you thought of that.

Does anyone know how to secure my network so that no one else can obtain an IP from me?

Thanks!

 

[flapeyre]

First, don't broadcast your SSID. Turn that off first, and then change the SSID to something else. Use the router's configuration utility. Make the same change for all computers on the network.

Second, you can enable MAC filtering on the router. Only let your roomie's laptop and yours onto the wireless network.

Third, implement wireless encryption. The new Linksys routers have one-button encryption, but I'd go with WPA PSK encryption, and pick something random as the key (hint: save the key to a thumb drive so your roomie can use it to configure the settings on her laptop).

Feles mala! Cur cista non uteris? Stramentum novum in ea posui!

 

[Duncour]

Awesome, thanks very much guys

 

[HelenBN]

You can probably also see your neighbors' wireless networks if they don't hide their SSID. So make sure that your roommate is not inadvertently using their wireless connection(s). Make sure your network is the first on the list of wireless connections available to connect to. I like to disable broadcast SSID, put the rest of the filters in place, re-enable broadcast SSID, capture that info on the laptop and move that wireless connection to the top, then disable broadcast SSID. Then it doesn't really matter how many connections you allow. She'll be the only one that can get on wirelessly. Also make sure she doesn't have important files shared. When she gets on her boyfiend's wireless connection or any of his neighbor's connections, ... well, you get the picture.