[Resolved (kind of)] AA1 kills my router's WIFI capability.

I'm having a strange problem with my ADSL router (Linksys WAG354G running 1.01.54 firmware).

The network is basically the following...

- Wifi vista laptop
- Wifi printer
- XBox 360 using wifi
- Wired laptop
- Wired server
- "Acer Aspire One" netbook that I'm trying to set up for use via wifi.

The problem(s):
I cannot get the Acer to connect over wifi unless I open the router's config webpage and hit the "save settings" button in the "MAC Filtering" page. I don't even have to alter any settings at all, the act of hitting the save button seems to finally enable the Acer to connect.

If I reboot the Acer then the exact same problem happens all over again. However if I simply disconnect/reconnect the Acer's wifi connection, then the connection is re-established straight away.

That's not the worst of it. It seems that when I shutdown the Acer's wifi, it seems to prevent all my other wifi devices from connecting until I hit the "save" button again.

The wire-connected devices have no problems at all, they are always connected and they never drop their connections.

I really don't understand what is wrong here. Is my Acer somehow crashing my router's wifi hardware?

There are only 5 entries in my MAC Filtering table, the laptop, the printer, an old entry from when my server had a wifi card in it, my XBOX and this new Acer.

I'm sure its not a signal problem because the acer and the printer are both within 2 feet of the router antenna, both report 100% signal quality.

 

Re: AA1 kills my router's WIFI capability.

A possible thought: have you set a limit on the number of devices which can connect? My router allows me to limit the addresses provided by its DHCP server.

I'm wondering if making it re-read the MAC table also makes it re-assign DHCP leases, thus perhaps regaining a spare 'slot' because something isn't using it at that time and thus having one to assign to the One - and vice versa when the One is disconnected.

 

Re: AA1 kills my router's WIFI capability.

Hi, thanks for responding.

I checked my router settings again and there seems to be no limit on the number of machines allowed to use wifi at once.

For now I'm running my Acer on cabled LAN, since I just want to play with my new toy for a bit. I'll probably end up taking the Acer to work with me on Monday and see if the guys there can figure something out, they are better at sorting out networking problems than I am. I'll keep trying though, if I make any headway I'll post here with the details.

I really need to get CentOS installed on this thing or I'll go insane

 

Re: AA1 kills my router's WIFI capability.

Just a thought, are any of that list set to use a static IP?. My mail/torrents server uses a fixed IP, but if that boots after either of the WiFi laptops (dynamic IPs) then the router halts with a 'duplicate IP' error message. I need to set the static IP to a higher number than those allocated by the router for dynamic IPs to sort it, once I remember the router password

It could be that your AA1 is trying to use an IP already allocated.
Or I could be talking complete bollox :lol:

Keith

 

Re: AA1 kills my router's WIFI capability.

Funny you should mention that.
As of yesterday there's a pretty detailed article about installing CentOS on the Aspire on the CentOS wiki.

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops/Acer/Aspire-One

 

Re: AA1 kills my router's WIFI capability.

Karona, you might be onto something there. I had a look last night and it didn't register with my brain at the time (beeritis) but the AA1's IP was 1.64, that does seem suspiciously similar to that of one of my other devices.

Scottro, thanks for the awesome link, I'll definitely check that out. Not having an external USB CDROM is driving me nuts. And I can't believe how expensive new ones are! Ridiculous. Anyway I'll probably end up doing a USB install once I can afford a large enough USB stick. I'm all spent-out after shelling out (pardon the pun) for the Acer.

 

Re: AA1 kills my router's WIFI capability.

Well I finally found a work-around for my problem. Using WEP on my router.

I feel naked like this but it's the only way the Acer will happily coexist with anything else without apparent disruption.

I don't think I can put up with this for long though.

Thanks for all your advice guys. I appreciate your help.