[njay]

Hello

I live in a building where the internet connection is shared between the tenants. My partner and I have a router for our apartment set up so we can use the wireless all throughout the house.
Since earlier today, however, my connection started failing randomly. On and off. I thought it might have just been the ISP, but a reset usually got me back on temporarily.

Then Windows told me somebody was using the same IP, which could be a reason for my connection difficulties. So I unplugged the cable from my router and put it directly into my PC, and here I am; on the internet without trouble.

Sure, my partner's away for work right now, but I really want to get the router back to work again, so we can use everything as normal!

Does anyone have an idea how to to something about this problem?

The router's a Linksys Wireless N.

Ta
nj.

[Advertisements]

Does anyone have a static IP address set on their machine?

[diabillic]

Does anyone have a static IP address set on their machine?

[dsenette]

what MIGHT be happening is that there are more than one person inside the building using a router, which increases the chance of any of the computers on the other side of the router having the same ip address. the complex is probably set up as an internal LAN on the inside, so you're not routing to the internet, you're routing to a lan that's routing to the internet, which would cause the issue you're seeing if someone else gets the same IP address.

connect a computer directly to the router and log in to the router's config page (put the ip address of the router in your browser). you'll want to find the DHCP settings (if you give us the make/model of your router we can tell you exactly where it is), change the DHCP scope that your router assigns to it's internal computers to something other than what it is now (it's probably 192.168.1.0 or 192.168.0.0), i'd suggest choosing something in the 10.0.0.0 subnet as it's rarely used in home routers. basically anything from 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.254)

[njay]

Hi

Cool, I'll try that. Though I'd like to understand it better before I do anything.

I'm on the page where I see all that and it gives me the IP address 192.168.1.1 and a 255.255.255.0 subnet mask. I can only choose a handful of options for the subnet mask from a drop down list. I don't really see anything called "DHCP scope", but the current IP address range is 192.168.1.100 to 149. The start IP is 192.168.1.100.

The make of my router is a Linksys and the model's called the WRT160NL.

[dsenette]

but the current IP address range is 192.168.1.100 to 149. The start IP is 192.168.1.100.

that's what you want to change. change it to 10.10.10.10 to 10.10.10.20 (you shouldn't have more than 10 devices right? if so change the last number of the second set to 30 or whatever)

I'm on the page where I see all that and it gives me the IP address 192.168.1.1 and a 255.255.255.0 subnet mask.

change that ip to 10.10.10.1 leave the subnet mask alone

[njay]

Okay, done and reconnected!
If this should solve it, thanks a lot for your help. Today had been without trouble so far, so it might have just been a one time thing. But even then, at least I won't experience the problem you think it is any time in the future.

[dsenette]

the likely hood of the issue coming back is pretty rare, but if it does, you can just pick different numbers (10.20.10.10 to 10.20.10.20 or whatever)