The guy that told you that the ip doesn't matter is mistaken. Two network devices trying to use the same IP will cause a conflict. And, in fact, it doesn't matter as much as you might think to be using the same channel (which isn't always 1, and in fact usually isn't, as 6 and 11 are much more common) as another router in the area, although it is better to avoid interference to use a different channel. To clarify, far as the connection is concerned, its responsibility ends at whatever hardware you attach to it. Therefore, if your router itself gets the same ip as another router on the network, it's going to crap itself. But if someone out there on the intartubes happens to have the same 192. address on a computer within their LAN, it makes no difference- you're not on the same network.

What form is the connection in? Do you have a cable or dsl modem in your room, or is it just a wall jack? If it's a cable modem, then all you should have to do is plug the router into the jack on the back of the modem, and the modem's DHCP should take care of the connection, no manual set-up needed. If it's a wall jack, things get a little more complicated, since you're probably talking to a switch that may or may not have a dhcp server backing it (seems like you might). In this case, you will need to copy the settings from the computer currently connected to the jack to the router config, and set that computer to obtain an ip automatically from the router. If your school is really tight on the 'security' like mine, you may even need to spoof the MAC (hardware) address of the router to make it think that it's your computer. If your router doesn't support that, then you'd need to re-register the connection with the MAC address of the router.

 

Connect directly to the dorm network connection and do this:

Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt:

Type the following command:

IPCONFIG /ALL

Right click in the command window and choose Select All, then hit Enter.
Paste the results in a message here.

If you are on a machine with no network connection, use a floppy, USB disk, or a CD-RW disk to transfer a text file with the information to allow pasting it here.

 

Fox, I did plug in the exact config, and when the router tries to auto-detect, it says it is a fixed ip, since the school registers the connection by mac addresses. I have all the settings correct, and I don't think that it has a dhcp, since the ip is the same no matter what. It is just a wall jack as well.

 

Hi rrbjtc3, johnwill's advice will help give us a little more insight into the way your school is running things.

Even if the school operates with a dhcp server that polls the mac before assigning an ip, you may still be able to set it up- many brands of router have a feature that is essentially a mac address spoof, built in to the administrator control panel. It'll usually be labeled something along the lines of 'clone mac' or similar. You shouldn't have to spoof your computer's mac away from the other one, or at least I didn't when I did the same thing for my school (which at the time was a fixed IP with no dhcp, but did filter by the mac).

 

That's were we were going. :smile: