CricketMX.com

Ok this is really screwy.

I have two routers (one is a complete deal the other is just a switch). I only use one since there are only two computers.

Since the other day I discovered that one both the computers have an IP address of 169.x.x.x, any IP of 169 is fake made by Windows. Also the subnet mask is 255.255.0.0, which is wrong because I have less than 100 computers on my network. The deafult gateway (router) has nothing in the field. Usually they start with 192.x.x.x. So I'm stumped. The computers can communicate, I can network the drives and everything. But I usually have problems when computers reboot or whatever when I'm trying to access my shared stuff in My Network Places.

I would manually configure it if I knew the router's address. I've tried various addresses, none work. I'm assuming the router would use a 192 address be deafult. This router was given to me so god only knows how it has been configured.

I will need router details in order to help.

Who made it?
Model number?

Try nmap if you're not sure what the router ip is. Set it to scan everywhere that the router might be.

I think this is the command I used:

nmap -O -v 192.168.0,1,100.*

This looked for machines with ip addresses starting with 192.168 and the next portion being 0, 1, or 100 and reported a little information about them.

You could probably tell it to scan more than that, but it's probably not needed, and it would take forever. For instance, you could tell it to scan *.*.*.*, but you'd start at 0.0.0.0 and work your way up. Not as helpful here.

I had to do this a little while ago when I was playing with a second router. If I can find the resource page I worked with, I'll let you know. It had some small bits of info that helped.

Oh, if I knew you were going to ask that question I would have provided the information. I will try that nes. This is in command prompt I assume...

It is a Dlink I know that right offhand. What is funny, I bought a SMC Networks switch, dunno the model on it either right off hand. It does the same exact thing, no gateway, 169 address, wrong subnet mask. So I'm thinking for starters the computers aren't configured for a router, why in XP I don't know. XP is pretty good about doing everything on it's own. Sometimes you got to slap it like a bitch though.

I had a similar experience not too long ago. I work part time with Computer Connection, and they do everything. I was helping thier outside tech set up a new server. It wasn't a full blown server as it was running XP Pro. Basically we had to set up all thier acounting programs, and then re-map all thier clients. The problem we ran into was that the Windows 2k machines weren't loging into the server. They could talk to but trying to launch a program that originated from the server would cause the computer to hang, or come up with errors. We also found out that you can't install Norton 2007 on 2000. So yeah, if you're on 2000, stick with 2006.

I wasn't able to find the article that helped me, but some of the high points:

1. Take a computer that isn't connected to the internet (disconnect one if you need to) and just plug the secondary router into it.
2. Get the ip worked out.
3. Connect to it and set the router ip to something inside the range offered by your main router. *
4. Run ethernet from a LAN port on master to a LAN port on slave. You won't use the slave's WAN port at all.
5. At this point, you should be able to use any computer hooked to the main router with internet access and ping or otherwise talk to your slave router.
6. This is really as far as I got.
7. I think you should be able to hook up new boxen to the slave router, and they should pull down dhcp, but I didn't test it.

* In my case, I'm using a Linksys for the main router (with wifi) and a Dlink for the slave. I changed the Dlink ip to 192.168.1.50 from the 192.168.0.1 it came with. You should be able to do a similar adjustment with your 169.

I haven't tried that command just yet. If I can pick up any IP I would be happy. The only thing that would be bad would be if the router was set to a 10.x.x.x address. For example. I'm at the library, seriously, the default gateway is a 10.x.x.x IP. That would mean I would have to tell it to start at 0.0.0.0 to 254.254.254.254

oooOOoo, another thingie I picked up. 255 is broadcast. Basically anytime you use 255 address you're talking to all the computers on the network.

So my brain has done a little work. The subnet mask which is usually 255.255.255.0 on a home network. So on a broadcast that happened to be 168.60.100.255, which talks to all the computers on your local network. A broadcast that is 168.60.255.255, would talk one level up and your network. Only thing is I have found that an IP of 255.255.255.255 is not valid, at least it is considered so by Norton. That address would be a broacast for the entire internet. Please correct me if I am wrong. Can't say I know a lot about networking, and it is sure an area that I'd like to learn more about.

Any IP ending in 255 is the broadcast address.

Just browsing through some of the online Dlink guides, they use 192.168.0.1 for the router address as default. So try there first.

I talked to one of the people I work with at the computer place, he said to reset the thing, and to hold the button in for 5 seconds, which I'm guessing flashes the memory. Still no damn router. I also found out that a regular switch will not assign an IP address. So yeah, I'm back to Networking 101 here. I understand the whole concept of two computers talking, but now I'm kind of lost. I'll explain.

Consider this. You have a small network, you have internet coming in to a main router, you then have the router connected to a seprate switch, from there all your computers get the internet and therefore are networked. My question is, how does the main router assign an IP adress to these computers? Unless they're manually configured, which would then make sense.

DHCP. The switch should be able to pass through the DHCP requests and acknowledgements. This is assuming the router does DHCP.

Ok, the router is a D-Link DI614+

I found some more stuff I'm going to try.

On this router there's M1 and M2 LED indicator, the M1 light is steady on when the unit is read, the M2 light is supposed to indicate whether the unit is defective or not.

Thing I'm going to try. Supposing there might be a problem with it assigning IP addresses and its not letting me login because my IP is out of range since its showing my IP to be 169.254.xxx.xxx and the router Ip being the 192.168.0.1, I'll need to manually configure the computers to a 192.168.0.x IP with the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.

I may have not pressed the reset button long enough, 10 seconds is what the manual says (no I don't have a manual, I read one off the net a minute ago) So I'll try this first, reboot both computers and see if it picks up anything.

To answer your question the router does do DHCP, or it should anyway.