Great. How's the wifi relay holding out now?

Perfectly. Ny neighbor gets such a strong signal from it that she can use her computer even in her bathroom, which is separated from the router by two brick walls.

I keep it in a sealed box (Thanks, Larry818!) with ventilation holes for the antennae and water drainage, wrapped in shiny foil for heat reflection. On a hot day the temperature inside stays below 45 degrees (C), and in a downpour no water gets inside. Setup was totally PnP. The only "problem" has been my neighbor not understanding that when the internet is down (ISP [or more recently router] failure) that the repeater is still putting out a nice five-bar signal, it's just that there is no data content to it.

Thank you for a very workable, reliable setup.

tanstaafl.

One of the pitfalls of being in the middle.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

I am back to the same problem, only this time resetting to factory defaults and re-entering the data has not solved it.

Rather than make you read through the preceding 30 posts, here is a summary. I can connect to the internet if I connect my computer directly to the cable modem. I cannot connect to the internet if I try and connect through the router. If I have everything connected "normally" (that is, through the router), I can print through the router, I can access the router's setup menus through my browser, my OOMA VOIP telephone works just fine, and SWMBO's iMac can talk to the printer through the router, but there is no internet connectivity.

One thing is different this time around: the router's "Status" menu in the browser shows no DHCP. The attached picture shows what that screen should look like on the left, and on the right is what it actually looks like. As little as I know about gateways, subnets, and IP addresses (astonishingly little!), even I can see that I'm not likely to get a connection set up that way. I don't know what a MAC address is, either, but it is different now from what it was before. Is that significant? Why the OOMA phone still works is a mystery to me.

All other router setup menus (except the one with the MAC address) look exactly like the screenshots posted earlier in this thread.

I have re-loaded the firmware for the modem, and also reloaded the configuration file I saved after the last time this happened. Additionally, I have cleared all settings to factory defaults and re-entered them manually, one screen at a time. Nothing has worked. It is annoying to have to change my wiring around every time I want to print something or talk on the phone.

I am one click away from ordering a new WRT54GL from Amazon, but before I do that, is there some obvious thing I'm overlooking here? Like maybe a big red key on my keyboard that says "Toggle DHCP" or something?

tanstaafl.

Well, shit. I connected things back normally so I could use the phone, and just for the hell of it I tried the internet and it worked. A check of the router's status menu shows it has filled in all the DHCP stuff. Was this temporary DHCP failure a router problem, a computer problem, or just my problem from lack of patience? This is not the first time the router has failed and after fiddling with it suddenly began working again.

Now what?

db

I have found that on most of the wrt54g that I administer, they occasionally just stop working. The fix is always to reset to defaults via the button on the back, re-enter all the setup stuff, and we're good for the next few months.

I have one only that can go years without problems...

I've never had to reconfigure any of the WRT54GL/GS routers around here once they're set up. But mine all run the add-on "Tomato" firmware, rather than the stock Linksys stuff. That could have a lot to do with it.

Kind of odd that the MAC address changed -- it should NOT change, ever. Unless you change it on purpose (requires advanced knowledge, usually).

btw. The MAC address is simply the 48-bit unique network serial number of the WAN ethernet port on the router .. unique to your router, and no other piece of networking gear on planet Earth has that same number (in theory, at least).

Cheers

Therein may lie your problem. Some ISP's, especially cable, register the MAC address of the PC that was originally setup on their network and only allow that MAC address to connect to their network. Because of this, most routers have "MAC address cloning". Just get the MAC address of the network device on your PC and plug it into the "MAC address clone" spot in your router software and viola, it'll connect to the internet again.

That MAY be the problem. Not sure, but it's definitely worth a try.