Cannot connect wirelessly

[DaveBrendon]

Hey people, hope someone can help me out. I've just recently got a Acer Aspire One notebook / netbook with wireless, and I pick up wireless networks -no problems there- but I can't connect to a desktop with a Telkom ADSL modem, not wirelessly anyway.

I've been playing around, but I don't have a clue what to do, so I've got some questions:

First: How do I connect wirelessly to the modem / router so that I can get internet on the Aspire? Is it possible?

Secondly: If I connect via LAN cable, can I get the internet connection that way? (have tried, but only get the PC's shared files).

XP Pro is running on the desktop, XP Home Premium on the Aspire. If anyone can help I'd be really grateful - pulling my hair out already here. :-(

Dave

 

[sn3rd]

For starters, how are you currently giving your machines access to the Internet?

Generally the setup is as follows:

|All PCs|-----|Switch|-----|Router|-----|Modem|-----|Internet|

Sometimes the Router has an ADSL (or other) modem built-in.

Then the router's task is to share its Internet connection in whatever way you see fit. Sometimes you want to limit access to some users, other times not. If this is an ADSL router, the Router makes a PPPoE connection and fowards traffic between this connection and the users on the network.

You absolutely CAN get the Internet access through EITHER a wireless or wired connection.

Wireless:
Connect to your router using a regular network cable (Cat5 with RJ45, wired in straight-through) and access its web interface (99% chance that it has a web interface; read the manual). From there you can set up your wireless settings for encryption, etc. Good general settings to use are WPA2 with AES using some obscure passphrase. Then you should be able to see the wireless network from your client PCs, and connect using the details you specified. If your router is configured to provide DHCP information to clients and share the Internet connection, then everything should be working. Otherwise, you'll have to refer to your router's manual to make it work.

Wired:
If you're using the wired connection, simply connecting to the router should provide you with the physical setup you need to access the Internet. All that's left is the actual Internet connection. Again, if it isn't working, refer to your router's documentation to verify that a connection is indeed established and that it is being shared.

If your problem is in figuring out what the "default" wireless key is, have a look at the bottom of the Telkom router; they usually have the default wireless key there.

 

[BillytheBrave]

maybe you should run your primary connection as default in the modems wireless settings... once finished just create an "always on connection" at my network places?

 

[Saajid]

Judging from your post, I am guessing you don't have much experience setting up routers and small/home networks.

The most likely problem is that your router is not configured correctly. The easiest way is to enable DHCP on your router, and plug an ethernet cable from your PC to your router.

If you can get this working, and you have internet, then you can proceed with setting up the WiFi connection.

It's not too hard to do, depending on how tech-savvy you are.

Important info you should provide, so we can help you:
- your current setup (as much detail as possible)
- modem and/or router make and model numbers

Your Acer laptop is picking up other wireless networks, because they have been set up already, and are publically visible. You need to setup your own wireless network in the same way, and make it publically visible. Once you do this, you can then connect to it, and it will ask you for a passphrase / password, depending on how you set it up.

EDIT: also what sn3rd said above

 

[Rishalin]

Main thing to note on WIFI is encryption.. otherwise some dodgy character will be stealing ur internet bandwidth from outside ur house..