linksys router problems

[Dan Cook]

Recently I had used this router at college for a few months and today I decided to use it at my parents' home as their Dlink had broken. Normally all I'd do it plug in the cables and I'd be good to go. But this time something weird is going on.

The router still thinks that it's hooked into my campus internet. Under the Connection-specific DNS Suffix it has wiu.edu where it should have Comcast. This is preventing, I think, the router from being able to have computers connect to it both through the wired ports and wirelessly.

I tried doing the IPCONFIG /renew and release and that didn't fix it. I also hit the reset button on the router and went through the config do reset it to the factory defaults, but that didn't fix it either.

Anyone have any ideas? This is driving me nuts.

 

[B Ozanne]

Do your parents have DSL or a cable modem?

Older DSL modems needed a user name and password, which only needs to be set in the router once. Most cable modems don't need this step.

You could try a hard reset. Which usually just involves holding down the reset button longer. But you'll be starting with a fresh router, new password, new ID, etc. Try releasing and renewing those IP's first. You want to release the IP on the WAN.

Or it could be the modem not assigning a new IP to the router. Try plugging your pc into the modem directly to rule out that problem.

 

[Dan Cook]

It's a cable modem.

I'll try that hard reset thing today.

The router's assigning IPs ok; it'll work fine if it's directly plugged into their computer.

 

[Andrew Herron]

Comcast cable modems will retain the MAC address of the last device connected to it and only assign an IP to that device. To clear that you have to cycle both the modem and the router.

Just unplug both for about 1 minute, plug in cable modem, wait for full lights to come on and then plug in the router. This should clear the modem's memory and assign a new IP to the router.

 

[Gerrit Gulden]

You might also have to go in the actual Router setup which is mostly http://192.168.1.1 Go into settings and clear out the Ip, Mac address, Dns servers so that the modem will automically configure everything to work.

LinkSys Router Configuration

LinkSys routers now ship with a Setup Wizard which is intended to simplfy basic configuration tasks.
We do not recommend the LinkSys Setup Wizard for two reasons:

1. The Setup Wizard is not significantly easier that the regular configuration menus
2. If you use the Setup Wizard, you will end up learning two interfaces for your LikSys router instead of just one

Instead, we recommend simply starting your web browser and jumping into the configuration.
Once your web browser is open, go to the URL http://192.168.1.1/. This will take you to a popup box which asks you to enter a username and password.

Logging in to a LinkSys Router The username is either blank or "admin" and the default password is "admin".
Once you are past the login screen, you are able to access (and change) a plethora of configuration options for your router.
Don't be worried by the enormous number and variety of options, your LinkSys router ships with default settings that enable it to work right out of the box in most environments.
From here the configuration options that you choose are largely up to your own personal preference.
If this is a wireless router, we recommend that you consider setting an SSID to identify the router as your own and configuring WEP to encrypt your wireless traffic.

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[Dan Cook]

Thanks all. The idea Andy had worked.