Router "Limited or no connectivity" on wired connection

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Mark T

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I have this really annoying problem which I just can't seem to get fix.

I recently changed broadband providers at my Mum & Dads house. They have a Belkin wireless router which they access via a wired connection from the lounge. It's been working fine for 4+ years on the existing internet connection.

So I go round and use my Mums laptop to connect to the router begin adjusting the new settings for the new broadband provider. All is fine for about half an hour then all of a sudden I get disconnected from the router and the message "limited or no connectivity" up. From looking at further information it says that it is unable to obtain an I.P address. So I reset the router try using different cables (there are three network points in the house) and all have the same message. So I think that maybe the laptop settings have changed and I try my Dad's computer also via hard wired connection. Exactly the same problem.

I take the laptop back my house and plug into my router and it connects quickly without any problems and I am able to use the internet etc. So thinking that maybe it's the cabling in the house I take a spare RJ45 cable round and plug the laptop straight into the router, again with the same mesage popping up. I have tried assigning a fixed I.P address to the laptop, restarted the TCP/IP service via running services.msc.

I can't think of anything else to try. It seems that some settings have changed on the router and I now I just can't connect to it. I also took my spare router from home and swapped them over with the same problem (even with a different RJ45 cable).

The only thing left for me to try is taking my laptop from home and trying to connect to the routers (either one). If that fails and I get the same error message then something must have changed the routers settings or it has something to do with my DSL line (although that shouldn't stop me from getting an I.P address right?)
 
I started to get similar issues a while back. It seems to occur when more than one machine connect regularly and more than one of those is habitually put into standby and not shut down. They seek to resume the IP address they were using and another machine is using it, leading to a network IP conflict.

My solution is to assign static IPs to everything. I also find this means that with wireless devices there's no hanging about waiting to connect - they're woken up and instantly connected.
 
It might mean you don't have a DHCP server. But that is not not hard by entering 192.168.0.1( or 192.168.0.0 depending on the router) in your browser and going through the router's guided setup. Then I'm sure you can just call the ISP and ask them for the network information for the setup.

Or this means your modem is not working correctly. Try resetting the modem.
 
I also thought that it might be a DHCP issue but instead of at the router, you might want to check on the modem, too. In my case, the modem has to assign the router an IP or no interwebs.

That said, I've also been having problems with my connection for a while (nothing that a router reset every few days doesn't fix :ouch:) but I think Famine might be on the right track with hard coding the IP instead of letting the DHCP handle it.
 
It just means that you have to assign a IP address to every computer you connect or laptop via wireless. It would be a problem convenience-wise if you were to have a friend over that brought his/her own laptop.
 
After about 3 hours of configuring, resetting, manic Googling and router cable swapping something finally happened and now I can connect to the router. It happened after about the 3rd hard reset of the router.

Internet- UP
Wireless - UP
Mum's new e-mail account- UP
Mum's Facebook- UP
Mum's knowledge of how to use the above- DOWN
Mum's instruction manual - IN PROGRESS
 
I know you said its fixed but I want to throw this out there.

The DSL modem has its own IP range like 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.254
Most Routers also use the same range thus causing a conflict. Therefore by changing the IP address of the router to a different range like 192.168.0.1 would fix any conflicts.
 
More info than anybody asked for, but maybe it will help a future viewer:

Limited connectivitiy means one thing and one thing only: your PC didn't get any IP configuration from a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server.

The reason for that may not be as simple, but usually is a problem with the router. Home networks, without dedicated server boxes, use the router as the DHCP server. It assigns IP addresses to the stations (Hosts) on the network. If it doesn't, they don't get an address (meaning they get a 169.something) and they can't talk, even amongst themselves.

Resetting the router (as opposed to just power cycling it) reset the DHCP configuration, and woke it up.

Most DSL providers, at least here in the states, have a NAT router built in to the device they call a modem. It's not a modem, it's a NAT router. (NAT means everybody on the LAN side appears to the other side as the same single address: Network Address Translation.) Putting another NAT router on its network may result in that router having the same network addressing (i.e. 192.168.1.0/24) on both LAN and WAN, which won't work. That wouldn't keep you from getting DHCP, but it would keep you off the Internet. Anyway, to get a network on a DSL modem (which is actually a NAT router) you just connect your PCs to its built-in switch, or connect another switch to it if you need more connections.

Cable modems are routers, too, but they don't do NAT. They just provide a public IP for the WAN interface of your router, or if it's just a PC, it gets the address. To put a network on a cable modem, you need a NAT router, like the Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, etc., that we all think of as routers, and connect your PCs to that.

There was a Linksys firmware version back in the early Win XP days whose DHCP server didn't work with XP and the PC wouldn't get an address, even though Win2000 PCs would.

Famine's issue is probably caused by the DHCP lease time being too short. Usually it's about 8 days by default, meaning that once assigned, the address stays assigned, even if the machine disappears. If the machine never renews it, then the address goes back in the pool. The renewal happens whenever the machine reappears. If the machine doesn't reappear and its address gets reassigned, then when it wakes up it can't claim its address. You want long DHCP lease times for this reason. If it's been set down to a single day, or even a few hours, bump it back longer.
 
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