Help With Wireless + Wired Setup

My Father Inlaw just bought a Dell laptop with WIFI. He currently has a desktop running off of Cable Internet through one of those little Motorola modems. He went to Radio Shack and bought a Linksys WRT54G wireless router.

The problem is when he comes out of the Motorola to the Linksys, when he hooks cable from Linksys to desktop he gets no signal. He has yet to try wifi.

Basically what I was wondering is, do we have the right equipment? I use cellular card and have never messed with wifi. Does the Linksys do a (pass through) or whatever you call it? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Simple Man

 

I have a cable modem (motorola), wifi (Linksys WRT54GL) and use both Ethernet connection and WiFi on laptop. It's running WinXP. So yes, your equipment is OK. Passthrough is needed only for very specific vendors and VPN, not your standard cable internet by the way.

I think the problem may be connected to the access point config, for example you haven't set MAC cloning.

 

Here's the order:

Connect cable modem to cable jack from provider.

Connect cable modem to WRT54G thru cable (the router has a plug where the cable comes from the modem)

Connect desktop computer to WRT54G thru cable (the router has 4 plugs to connect to a computer)

Enable wireless on WR54G

Done.

 

Thanks guys, when I get off work I will go by and try it again. He might just have it hooked up wrong. Just to make sure, do I have to install any software or anything on the desktop? Thanks.

 

Called him and told him what you said to do. He can not get on wired or wireless. But he can see the wireless router on his laptop, it just want let him connect. Not sure what do try now. Could the router just be bad?

 

You have to connect the cable from the modem to the router (not into the 4group one). Then connect a cable from one of the grouped 4 to your ethernet desktop. Since it's a direct connect to the desktop it should not require anymore settings in the desktop.

 

The ISP has registered the MAC address of the desktop PC with the provider. He need to clone the MAC address of the desktop in to the Linksys. This way the ISP still sees the registered MAC address even though it's now the linksys. Also if he had connection info that the pc used to connect through the modem, this must be entered in the linksys (PPPoE). Most DSL services need this.

 

How do I do this, or where do I find it? I think this is the problem, because on the Setup Wizard it asks for it, but it lets me go on without it, it asks me if the modem is unplugged.

 

Start with cloning PC's MAC on WAN (external) LAN port. It should be somewhere in Advanced tab I think, after connecting to router (how to connect to the router is described in the manual). I have a couple of Linksys APs, but all of them have modified firmware, so I don't remember where exactly this is located.