Help!

[Dallows]

My bro is trying to help his girlfriend and roommate share a connection to the net through a router. It's DSL, dunno the ISP though. Problem is this: There is a connection made between the two computers and the router. But the page doesn't load through internet explorer. And when he tries to sign on to the MSN Messenger it says it cannot connect because there is a firewall blocking it. The router is a Linksys BEFSR41, just like mine. And one of the pc's is on WinXP, the other 2000. Any ideas or should I just reset the router again (Did it once already with all the wires connected) and go through the setup step by step. Or try going through the network setup wizard? Thanks

[Dallows]

I just found out that it might be a cable connection. The modem is a surfboard with a coaxil (I spelled it wrong I know) but it's for the cable wire, that's being used. Follow?

[Darthtanion]

If you're using a software based firewall, then you'll want to make sure that this firewall is set up to allow full access by each PC on the network.

As an example, your router will usually give itself an internal IP address of 192.168.0.1 and then give each added PC an IP address adding one to the last number. Within your firewall program (Norton, ZoneAlarm, whatever you use) you should have a page to add trusted IP addresses to your system. Make sure that you add all IP addresses listed in the router utility. This will make sure that all systems have full access to not only the network, but individual PCs on that network.

Also, make sure that you enter your router configuration utility and that all PCs hooked to the network are listed in there. If they are, THEN reset your router. If you have an external modem being used (cable modem for example), then you'll want to unplug the power to both this and the router. Leave it poweder down for at least a couple of minutes. This allows the network to completely reset itself. From there, plug in the modem and let it complete its testing phase. Once it shows a steady light indicating it is online and connected to your ISP service, then you can plug in the router and it should finish the reset and have you connected.

Hope this helps some. :)

[Dallows]

We've managed to est a connection from each computer to the router. We just can't access the the internet, via either MSN messenger or IE. He's down in florida and I'm up in new york. It would be easier to troubleshoot if I were there, ya know.

[VinnieVen]

Does the router show an external IP? Can you ping any external ip's?

[Dallows]

He was able to ping the router, but I don't think anything else, like a website.

[VinnieVen]

There are a bunch of things it could be.

I would expect that the router has not been setup properly to obtain the IP from the ISP. Make sure the router is set to Dynamic Ip Address, and not to PPPoe as that is for DSL and not cable.

Should that fail, I would check to see if a computer can obtain an IP by plugging the Cable modem straight into the computer.

If one of the two systems originally had the cable mdem plugged into it, then plug it into that one as a lot of cable providers track MAC addresses and will only renew every couple days. The effect that this has is if a system was connected to the cable modem and the IP was not released then the ISP is expecting only a specific MAC address from the IP and will not connect unless that one is presented.