[RavenMind]

Hello. I did see SixShooter's thread, but didn't want to hijack it with questions of my own. Anyway, I set up a wireless network for my parents home. At this point they only have 1 desktop & 1 laptop connecting to it. The connections are as such: Comcast High Speed Internet cable > Motorola Surfboard Modem > Belkin wireless router > Belkin wireless access point > Belkin wireless receivers to the computers.

The Motorola modem never came with a disk, Comcast just set it up & left. The Belkin accessories came with a monitor program that seems mostly useless. It pretty much just monitors the signal strength & tells me what ID's it's connecting to.

My questions are, does anybody know of some good free programs to monitor or restrict access to the WAN, or utilities to help discover/change the settings. Also any suggestions on making the network more secure?

Thanks in advance!

RavenMind

 

[RavenMind]

I also neglected to mention that the reason I'm concerned about this now is because the speed went way downhill suddenly last week. It had been working fine, and then for no apparent reason just dropped. It's still connected & will still load webpages, but just very slowly (more so than dialup), and downloading programs is impossible, it gets about 15k into the download & then stalls. Comcast says it's nothing on their end, all connections are fine, and have tried resetting all the equipment. It also appears to be free of malware/viruses. So the only other thing I could think of is that perhaps somebody else is connecting to the WAN & eating up the bandwidth..?

 

[CTSNKY]

Do I understand correctly that you are using a wireless router AND a wireless access point?

You should be able to see if anyone else is connecting thru the DHCP Clients table on the router config screens.

 

[johnwill]

Connect a computer directly to the cable modem hard wired, see if the Comcast service is running full speed. If so, then we can look into causes for the slowdown on your end.

 

[RavenMind]

Do I understand correctly that you are using a wireless router AND a wireless access point?

Yep, when we had 3 other computers hooked up to the network around the house, the WAP was suggested to help boost the signal.

You should be able to see if anyone else is connecting thru the DHCP Clients table on the router config screens.

I don't believe I've ever seen a router config screen. I'll have to snoop around in the software it came with the next time I'm over there.

Connect a computer directly to the cable modem hard wired, see if the Comcast service is running full speed. If so, then we can look into causes for the slowdown on your end.

Strange thing about that, when we pulled the other 3 computers out of the house I wound up moving the modem & router to a different computer. I tried connecting the modem directly to that computer, and then out to the router, but the speed was terrible that way. So I tried the current configuration, cable > modem > router > WAP > then out to both computers via receivers, and it worked well for several months. I'll try a direct connection again when I'm over there Saturday & see what happens.

 

[Squashman]

You can access the routers config page thru a Web Browser. Open up a command prompt (dos prompt) and type ipconfig /all.

The gateway address is your routers ip address.
Open up IE and type http://ip address of gateway

 

[RavenMind]

Thanks, everybody, for the help!! :grin:

Strangely enough their internet connection has now sped back up to where it was, and so far has stayed that way.

So, does anyone know of a way to configure the router, or know of a program that will keep other people from being able to acces the wireless network?

 

[johnwill]

First stop is encryption, WPA with a long random key is best, but WEP is better than nothing if you don't have WPA capability.

 

[RavenMind]

Hmmm, is that something I should look for in the configuation utility?
(Sorry for all the questions; I'm only over there about once a week and don't have the ability to play around with it at home)

 

[johnwill]

Perhaps you should look into UltraVNC for on-the-road configuration help. :grin:

 

[Squashman]

Hmmm, is that something I should look for in the configuation utility?
(Sorry for all the questions; I'm only over there about once a week and don't have the ability to play around with it at home)

RTFM for your network hardware. If you don't have them, you can download them from the vendors website.

 

[RavenMind]

Thanks for all your help johnwill & Squashman! :grin: