Beginner questions: Setting up WiFi

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Squirrel93

New Member
Hi! These are probably pretty basic questions but I've never done this before.

As a student, I live in a small apartment (about 200 ft2, converted it). Broadband is included in my rent, and right now I connect my laptop to an ethernet port in the wall.

My friend told me I could get some kind of router and connect my laptop, xbox and phone wirelessly. How do I go about this? Any particular brand I should keep an eye open for? I don't need extensive coverage as my apartment is pretty small. How strong would the radiation be, you think? Thanks!
 
Radiation is nothing to worry about with it. You get far more than you would think already due to the heavy saturation of wifi tech today.

Brand and such, Asus seems to be recommended at lot on here. I Personally use a cheap Netgear wireless-N router and have not had a problem. Just plugged it into the router/modem we already had, turned off the radio in the modem (no use in 2 radios within 6 inches of each other), went into the control panel and set the name and passcode. Most others will be pretty close in setup, but based on model may have more or less options.

from low to high I recommend these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1CS0H15757 (what I use)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=33-124-190&IsVirtualParent=1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320062

Let us know if your budget does not fit any of these and we can try to find some more affordable units.
 
Go with what Wolfe says I think. Doesn't your ISP give you a wireless router with your package?

Squirrel93 said:
How strong would the radiation be?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry about radiation. Radiation is given out by everything, just certain things give out more than others.

(Sorry if it is quite large, I can remove it if needbe, just say.)

For the radiation, read this. I definately wouldn't worry about it.
radiation.png
 
Yes I can recommend the NetGear DGN1000. Cheap but does the job.
DGN2200 is the next step up if you want to use VoIP as it handles Quality of Service - but this a bit more advanced.
 
Thanks for replying! I got a new Netgear RP614 from a guy who didn't need it, but I'm kind of lost. I connect the router and my laptop fine, but the router does not seem to access the Internet. Do I need a modem, even though before I could just plug my laptop straight into the wall ethernet port and go? This is what I did with the router now, but it doesn't seem to work. Like I said, I know very little of these things.

Could it have anything to do with my landlord requiring us tenants to use certain "DNS settings"? I switched to manual DNS settings and typed in the codes I got with my contract when I just plugged my laptop into the wall. Now I had to switch to automatic for the laptop to recognise the router.

In short: Do I need a modem?

EDIT: Modem or no, the wall port seems to be out of order. I connected my Xbox 360 to it with a cable and was unable to log on to Xbox Live. I can't think of any reason why the wall socket should suddenly stop working. Maybe I've knocked into it when moving my desk around - or some kind of vermin have felt the spring coming, woken up and started eating the cables inside the walls? No? Well, who knows. Guess I'll have to ask someone to look at it.
 
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The landlord must have a modem and router somewhere in order for you to get internet. So you don't need a modem. Most likely an issue at the router is why your wall jack don't work. You could hook up a router in your apartment but you would have to change some settings and hook it up differently.
 
I thought I had solved it. As my laptop connects fine to the router, I went to 192.168.0.1 and filled in the static IP, gateway, DNS settings etc manually. I do everything the landlord's instructions tell me to, but the problem persists.

The instructions point out that "If you have a router, that's where you need to change the settings. The subnet mask is 25 bit." I already filled in the subnet mask 255.255.255.128 in the router settings, but no luck.

EDIT: I left "MAC Address" at default, as I don't know what it is and haven't received any instructions about it.

I connect the "modem" port on the router into the wall via ethernet, and connect my laptop to port 1. Laptop <-> Router is fine, Router <-> Internet isn't.
 
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Where did you fill in the settings? There might be separate settings for the internal and external networks. You shouldn't need to touch the MAC address at all, if you saw an option to change it there's a chance you might have been changing internal network settings, but I can't really tell without being able to see.
 
This is what it looks like:

http://i688.photobucket.com/albums/vv246/BeaverGuy93/ipsettings_zps114ae9d0.png

You see all the sections to the left-hand side. There is only one more link below "Remote Management", "UPnP". The numbers filled in is what I got together with my rental contract. It's been working fine as long as I just filled them into the Network Settings (I guess? translating everything into English) menu on the computer, but recently - even before getting the router - it just plain stopped working. The laptop keeps telling me there is no ethernet cable connection to the Internet even though there is. When I connect the laptop to the router with the same cable, it works fine - but the router won't access the Internet from the ethernet wall socket even with this static IP, Gateway etc.
Still not sure whether this is a technical problem or if the wall socket is simply broken.

I made a simple Paint sketch of what it looks like:

http://i688.photobucket.com/albums/vv246/BeaverGuy93/routerproblemimage_zps28763985.png

Oh, and I had to change to "automatic IP" in Network Settings on the laptop itself in order to use it for the router, or there was a conflict.
Thanks a lot for your time.
 
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If the connection started playing up even before you got the router, the problem could very well be somewhere else (network hardware in the building or possibly even your cable - I've had funny phantom cables that work fine one moment and then suddenly stop working the next, makes tracking down these faults really annoying).

Also, did you change any of the settings in LAN IP setup (that would be the "internal" I was talking about before)? It should have DHCP/automatic configuration enabled. Can you ping the gateway address (given by the landlord) from the computer when connected through the router? And yes, just to be sure you should be using automatic IP settings for all devices connected to the router.
 
It's ping pong. Your computer sends a "ping" to an address, and the machine at that address responds with a "pong". It's a simple way to check if there is any sort of connectivity in the network, you don't need to set anything up to use it. So, in cmd you would type "ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the gateway IP. If it responds, then you have at least some connectivity and you can keep troubleshooting your own network. If not, then it might be time to have a chat with your landlord... I have no idea how a wall socket would break, though.

As for LAN IP settings, I see nothing wrong there.
 
I see, thanks for putting it so simply! I did not manage to ping the "Gateway IP". Said "Request timed out" a few times, then afterwards "4 sent, 0 received. Lost: 4." I get response when I pinged the "IP Address", though, but I don't know if I'm supposed to do that.

So... does this mean the fault does not lie with my settings but with the landlord's modem or something?
 
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Pinging "IP address" literally only pings your own computer, so that's unlikely to fail unless networking on the machine is down - seeing as it works, however, it's not saying anything useful. You could try plugging your computer to the wall again (and setting it up again as per your landlord's instructions) just to make sure that's not the problem, but if it still doesn't work (and it worked fine before with those exact settings) then the problem is almost certainly not with your hardware or configuration. You could try direct connection with a few devices just to be sure.

Of course, the problem could still be at your end, but I can't think of anything that could possibly have gone wrong. Does your router have a ping tool by any chance?
 
Nope - tried plugging the laptop directly into the wall socket again and use static IP, Gateway etc. No luck.

And I'm becoming somewhat worried about my computer. I tried to "detect error", "troubleshoot" whatever term is used in English, and for some reason the computer wanted to activate wireless internet connectivity (which I had to deactivate in order to try the wired connection). Sharing data usage from my phone at the moment. Either my computer's network card is entirely messed up (but can't find any errors in Device Manager) or the wall socket is out of order. Will ask my neighbours if they have trouble as well - shouldn't be just my apartment, right?

Thanks again for helping out. Can't find anything called "ping tool" or equivalent in the router settings.
 
If neither of the router or your computer work, it's highly unlikely to be a hardware fault with one of your devices (and if the connection between the router and laptop works, that possibility almost certainly ruled out). As for the problem being with just your apartment - that could happen if the actual physical connection (cabling/socket) is damaged close enough to your apartment, but it still might be worth asking around. I've totally ran out of ideas, though.
 
The caretaker was just here and unscrewed the ethernet socket. He claims there seems to be nothing wrong there. I'll need to contact the landlord's IT guy tonight, should've done that last week already. I do wonder what could possibly be the matter, it's all very intriguing. Thanks for your advice!

This is a minor problem, however, compared to the fact that my computer no longer recognises the electric wall socket but has switched to battery mode for no reason. The bulky thing (whatever it's called, halfway down the power cord) no longer glows. Very content with the fact that my IT world falls apart the same week I need to turn in my university essay...
 
(Got a new power cord, the other one had definitely served its time.)

I just thought I should let you know that the IT guy just came around and explained that there had been a mistake - apparently I was IP blocked for still using the address from my old apartment, which someone else started using a week ago, hence closing my connection off. No idea how that works but he promised to have it up and running tomorrow. Somehow, it felt like there was something out of my control all along.

Thanks for trying to help out!
 
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