A friend contacted me with a networking problem the other day that
I concept I would share with you. Maybe you have experienced it as
well. And you know the definition of feel right?
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted!
My friend and his wife had gone wireless. They bought new laptops
with built-in wireless (Wifi) and wanted to begin to roam around
the homeplace untethered by Lan cables while connected to the Internet.
So in increasing to the laptops they came home with a LinkSys wireless
router to supply the indispensable way point for the laptops.
The guy at the computer store said it would work like a charm.
All they had to do was plug in the wireless router and go.
After rebooting, powering off and on, and calling the computer store
all with no success, they figured they had nothing to lose by calling me.
I haven't figured out whether I'm flattered or insulted.
Nonetheless, I was able to help because I had feel (see definition above).
Let's start with a slight background. As you probably know, to send and receive information
on the Internet, your computer has to have an Internet Protocol (Ip) address.
This Ip address is a part of the Internet's Transmission control Protocol (Tcp).
These addresses, which uniquely identify devices on the Internet,
are given out in blocks to Internet service Providers (Isps)
by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (Iana).
Your Isp then redistributes these addresses to its customers. You, in other words!
I haven't heard of any Isp that gives out complicated Ip addresses per account.
Usually if you have one digital subscriber line (Dsl) or one cable-Tv Internet association you get
one Ip address. And even then, the Ip is often not enduringly assigned to you.
The Isp will let you use it while you're online and then give it to someone
else when you disconnect (i.e. Turn off your Dsl or cable modem). This process
is called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (Dhcp). Remember this Dhcp.
It will show up later!
So how is it that at your home you've been able to have more than one computer
with only one Ip address?
Well two things come into play.
First the Iana has reserved the
following three blocks of the Ip address space for inexpressive internets:
10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 (10/8 prefix)
172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 (172.16/12 prefix)
192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)
Secondly there's someone else protocol called Network Address Translation (Nat) involved.
The inexpressive Ip address mentioned can be used freely and the Internet system
should ignore any those addresses if they ramble out on the facts superhighway.
But your local router listens for those addresses. And if there are any packets, as they're
sometimes called, with a inexpressive (or internal) Ip address headed out onto the Internet,
your router will substitute its own Ip address that it acquired from your Isp
(this is the Network Address Translation).
When facts returns your router will get it first and keep track of where to
send it back to you via your inexpressive (or internal) Ip address.
Your router is able to do this even if you have complicated computers on your
private (or internal) network.
Now, getting back to our problem. You may have noticed that your wired Pc gets one of
these Nat inexpressive addresses such as 192.168.1.100 when you turn it on. Routers
request a real address from your Isp (many times via Dhcp). And then your
router may give you an inexpressive Ip address via its own Dhcp server. When it gives you
the Ip address it also tells you to send your packets to it first. It becomes
your gateway so that it can translate the internal inexpressive Ip address to the real
Ip address. So the gateway Ip address many (but not all) routers select by default is 192.168.1.1
and especially LinkSys routers.
But here's what happened to my friend. They already had a wired router (a Netopia) that
was getting a real Internet address and using a inexpressive internal gateway Ip address of
192.168.1.1 for the computers on the wired network. When the new LinkSys wireless router
was plugged into the Netopia, it asked for an Ip address via Dhcp. It was give an Ip address of 192.168.1.114
by the Netopia. And then the LinkSys set itself up as gateway Ip address 192.168.1.1 for the wireless
Pcs that connected. Now you might think this would work since there were two detach private
networks in fact. But as it turns out, routers are pretty smart, but apparently not that
smart. The LinkSys wireless router received outbound packets at gateway Ip address 192.168.1.1 but
got mixed up trying to send them onto the Netopia router which also had a gateway
Ip address of 192.168.1.1 that it was using.
The solution? Using the LinkSys browser-based configuration utility I changed the default gateway Ip
address to 192.168.2.1 for the LinkSys.
Now I ignored some Ip addressing issues such as subnets and masks.
So if you're looking for more facts or more details, try searching for
"Ip addressing", "private Ip network", "Nat protocol",
or "Dhcp".
I hope my feel saves you from getting some experience!
Have You Had Problems Setting Up A Wireless Router?