I have installed a new LinkSys router into my home network. Currently
my two desktop PCs and one notebook PC are connected. Each PC has its
own IP address. The router is connected to a cable modem, which is how
I access the Internet.

For the record, my ISP is Insight (insightbb.com). They technically
don't support routers, so support on an issue like mine is tough to
get.

What I want to do:

The router is also wireless capable (it's LinkSys model BEFW11S4). I
have a wireless PC Card for the notebook that, in theory, should allow
me to roam around my house. However, when I unplug the wired
connection from the router to my notebook and plug the wireless PC
Card in I get nothing. There IS a connection between the wireless card
and the router... I see the signal and it's good. But I think because
my notebook's ethernet adapter has its own IP address things go
bonkers when I unplug the cord and try to go wireless.

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Request for Question Clarification by davidmaymudes-ga on 17 Oct 2002 19:14 PDT

have you tried disabling the ethernet adapter temporarily to make sure
the wireless connection is working?  personally, when I do this I
physically remove my ethernet PC card and plug in the wireless
card....

other things you could try: run ipconfig, see if it reports reasonable
values....

are you running NAT at your router, or does each of your PCs have a
real IP address that your ISP knows about?

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Request for Question Clarification by pwizard-ga on 17 Oct 2002 19:46 PDT

Can you tell me what operating system you are running on the notebook PC?

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Clarification of Question by holstein-ga on 18 Oct 2002 02:31 PDT

///have you tried disabling the ethernet adapter temporarily to make
sure
the wireless connection is working?  personally, when I do this I
physically remove my ethernet PC card and plug in the wireless
card.

I've not done this. My fear is screwing up my hard-wired connection
when I need to go back to it, leaving me with no Internet on my
notebook.
 
///are you running NAT at your router, or does each of your PCs have a
real IP address that your ISP knows about?

My PC has real IP addresses my ISP knows about, although I'm told by
the installer that they refresh/change every four days.

I'm running Windows 2000 on this machine, by the way.

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Request for Question Clarification by pwizard-ga on 18 Oct 2002 08:31 PDT

OK, you're going to have to do a couple of things before we can give
you a definite answer. I need for you to determine that your wireless
connection works at all browsing to the Internet. You've already
determined that the wireless protocol can communicate with the access
point, which is good, but we need to verify that TCP/IP is functioning
correctly and that the settings are working for your current setup.

Usually with a router setup like yours, the router gets a "real" IP
address from your ISP and then it assigns "private" IP addresses to
each of the devices connected to it - whether wireless or not. Your
ISP may switch your DHCP IP address every few days, but this only
affects the router and shouldn't interfere with the configuration of
the end clients.

See if you can do this:

On your 2000 Notebook, right-click on My Network Places and then
select properties. You should show both your wired and wireless LAN
connections. Determine which is the wireless connection, right-click
on it and the select "Disable". It should turn grey once it's
disabled. Now, go to a command prompt and type IPCONFIG /ALL and make
a note of the IP address information (IP, SUBNET MASK, DEF GATEWAY,
DNS NUMBERS, ETC). Make sure you can still browse the web ok.

Now, go back and do the opposite. First, disable the wired network
connection (don't worry, this does not physically change any system
parameters, basically just temporarily turns it off) and then enable
the wireless one. Go back to command prompt and run the IPCONFIG /ALL
again. Write down the info you get again. See if you can now surf the
web with the wireless connection.

Essentially if everything is configured correctly, the two IPCONFIG
dumps should look pretty close to the same, with the IP address
probably being the only thing that is different. If they're not, then
that is most likely your problem. Enabling/Disabling the connections
like this is probably going to end up being the solution to your
problem as well once we determine that your IP configs are correctly
configured.

Let me know the results of the above and I'll be able to formulate an
official answer. Make sure you XXX out part of the IP address if
they're not in the 198.168 range. Thanks.

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Clarification of Question by holstein-ga on 18 Oct 2002 17:30 PDT

One of your tips helped. I disabled my built-in ethernet card and then
plugged in the wireless PC card and rebooted. My ISP thought the card
was a new PC and required me to "log off" my other and reboot, but
that worked.

Some of the parameters between the two cards are similar. I'm not sure
if I can tell the wireless card to adopt the exact IP address, etc.,
that the built-in port has... can I? In Windows 2000 networking setup
it's set to obtain ip addresses automatically.

Greetings holstein,

I decided to go ahead and formulate this into an official answer as I
feel that we've got enough information now to find a workable solution
to your problem.

Now that your ISP has recorded both of the MAC addresses for your two
network cards, you can easily switch between the two using the disable
feature I mentioned above. Since both of your cards are set to use
DHCP (obtain an address automatically), you can dynamically
enable/disable the cards and it will request and obtain and address
during the enable stage. You can have both your built-in and wireless
cards plugged in at the same time, just make sure that you only have
one of them ENABLED at once. Enabling them both simultaneously will
probably confuse the PC as it will not know which way to route the
packets. You can try it, but I don't think it's going to work properly
(or be 100% reliable). Also, you do not have to reboot after
enabling/disabling the connections - Windows2000 will make all the
necessary changes to the IP configuration dynamically.

So, to recap:

1. Leave both cards plugged into the notebook PC. (or leave the
wireless card plugged in if the ethernet is built-in).

2. Right-Click on My Network Places and then select properties to view
your two connections. Right click to enable/disable each connection as
necessary. No reboot is needed.

3. Make sure you only have one connection enabled at once.

Each card when enabled will make a DHCP request to your router. They
will both get whatever IP address is assigned from the router (or
passed from the ISP). These addresses most likely will not be
identical and it's not necessary for them to be unless you're trying
to run some sort of server on the PC where it needs a fixed address.
You could set both cards to have the same IP address information if
you wanted, you would just need to disable DHCP and enter static
addresses for both connections. This would have to be OK'd by your ISP
however and/or defined on your router.

I think the method of enabling/disabling as necessary is the best
solution to your problem. You could also setup two different hardware
profiles in device manager where one card is disabled, but that would
require that you actually logoff and back on each time you wanted to
change the connection type.

I hope I've helped to answer your question. Please don't hesitate to
ask for clarification if you need futher assistance from me on this
question -- I'll be happy to help you further.

Sincerely,
PWizard

Another option - (one I use at home) is to configure the linksys
router to use nat and provide dhcp to the lan side of the linksys
router.

Do this by enabling dhcp on your linksys router and configuring a
range of private ip addresses such as 192.168.1.100 with a number of
dhcp users sufficient to cover all wired and wireless connections plus
a few extra due to lease timing and renewal issues.  Your notebook
will take at least two, and if an address is not available that
connection will not work. Also, this private subnet must be different
than your isp subnet.  W2K will work fine with wired, wireless or
both.