Two laptops, one router = fail

Caporegime
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
25,769
Hello,

Here is the drill I have VM broadband with a Linksys router, both laptops connect fine on their own but when one is already connected the other refuses to... both appear to have been assigned their own IP address and both MAC addresses are added to the router as allowed.

Any ideas?

Thanks.
 
Do they both work at the same time if one (or both) are plugged into the router using ethernet?

If they both work fine on wires, then it would point to an issue purely with the wireless. Otherwise, it'd point to an issue with the router or the computers themselves.

Do the computers pop up any messages when the second (of the two) computers connects to the wireless? Also, what operating systems are being used? I vaguely remember someone having network problems when his Ubuntu system was introduced onto the network fairly recently.
 
you have plugged the WAN Virgin media cable into the repeater ports on the router I would assume....

the laptop thats manages to get the IP from the VM ??modem?? will work, the laptop that gets a DHCP address from the router will look like its ok but will have not internet access...

(a lot of guessing going on here btw)
 
I've just tried router factory defaults and re-configuring and rebooting the modem it's no different, basically when one is connected and I try to connect with the other one I just get "can't connect" type error like there is some sort of conflict.

my router is set to support 50 ip addresses and there don't appear to be any conflict between them.

For a bit of background I've been using 1 PC + 1 laptop on the router for years, just got a new laptop today and can't get both the laptops to connect together.
 
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I've just wacked the DD-WRT mini build on and they have both connected right away.... so either it's a bug in the Linksys firmware or it was a few files left over from when I used to have DD-WRT/Tomato installed that were somehow interfering, when I used to use Tomato I'd set wireless clients to 1 for security purposes so my best guess is that was still active even though the Linksys firmware has no such setting. :confused:

Thanks for all the suggestions I guess I'll go back to Tomato or something.
 
Ah mmj_uk - I've read a few pages about Tomato and DDWRT firmware remembering settings from previous "flashes". If I remember right, some sites offered stuff to run as a custom action to "fix" the problems. At least it's all working fine now though :D
 
It's not I bricked it. :o

I tried using some software to downgrade it back to VXWorks firmware and it didn't work, then afterwards I remembered that my model didn't actually come with VXWorks it was Linux to begin with. I should have just stuck Tomato back on it. :rolleyes:

Oh well it's an excuse to get a decent wireless-N one :D what's the current favourite?
 
WRT320N or it's newer equivalent if there is one. Supports DDWRT too :)

Don't feel alone, first time I tried DDWRT I didn't read the site to know you had to install the lightweigh DWRT first and use that to install the beefier version, and tried it straight from the Linksys firmware update tool and bricked the router :) But you only do it once :D
 
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