help making wireless secured

moretothegirl

Im not great with computers so maybe this is a very basic problem, apologies if so.... basically I am trying to make my new wireless internet secured.

I recently got wireless and it came with a little black modem, instead of buying their router as well I got them to set up the modem with my old eircom netopia router.

everything seems to be working fine regards my pc and laptops in the house however the network is unsecured and I live in a built up area and want to make it secured. Ive tried going to the address 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.0.1 but neither of those pages will work ....

does anybody have any info or help for me??

much appreciated

Knasher

The default address of the netopia router is 192.168.1.254
I've never used on of those myself so I can't give you a step by step, but what you are looking for is a wireless security section and you need to set the encryption to WPA (or wpa 2 if its there). If you have an option between TKIP or AES then AES is the more secure option. Finally when your choosing your password don't pick a plain word as those can be brute force hacked.

moretothegirl

Knasher wrote: »

The default address of the netopia router is 192.168.1.254
I've never used on of those myself so I can't give you a step by step, but what you are looking for is a wireless security section and you need to set the encryption to WPA (or wpa 2 if its there). If you have an option between TKIP or AES then AES is the more secure option. Finally when your choosing your password don't pick a plain word as those can be brute force hacked.

thanks so much for your reply, unfortunately that address wont work for me either ...

moretothegirl

ok so im still so confused with this problem. basically Ive a hitech modem, netopia router.... when i connect to the internet from my modem directly with an ethernet I still can't go to my router page 192.168...... etc. However, I just discovered that my netopia router was still turned on yet not connected to my modem, and while my netopia was on my laptop "connected to it, without internet access" and this suddenly allowed me to open the IP address..... I think basically my laptop was connected online using my modem but because it thought it was connected to my netopia router too it let me onto the page but wouldnt let me log in because it said my DSL wasn't connected...

I really hope this isnt too confusing to understand but basically before I used to have eircom and so my netopia router was connected to DSL as it was eircom broadband. Now I am using a satellite bband so it shouldnt need a DSL.

Im getting a headache from all of this!

Knasher

If I had to guess I would say you are running a DHCP server on both the Netopia and the satalite modem (a DHCP server is what gives your laptop an IP address) and when you connect your modem responds first. Also the netopia and the sat modem are in differnet address ranges so when you get an IP from one you can't talk to the other. If I were you I would disable the DHCP server on the Netopia and change its IP so that its in the same range as the sat modem.

As I said previously I've never just one of those Netopia routers myself so I'm pretty unfamiliar with them. I've never heard of Eircom setting the modems up such that you can't adjust settings when you aren't on DSL, its possible of course it just sounds unlikely. If they have then your options are limited, are you 100% sure that you can't log in and that you're not just looking at the page after login that is informing you that you're not connected to DSL.

moretothegirl

Knasher wrote: »

If I had to guess I would say you are running a DHCP server on both the Netopia and the satalite modem (a DHCP server is what gives your laptop an IP address) and when you connect your modem responds first. Also the netopia and the sat modem are in differnet address ranges so when you get an IP from one you can't talk to the other. If I were you I would disable the DHCP server on the Netopia and change its IP so that its in the same range as the sat modem.

As I said previously I've never just one of those Netopia routers myself so I'm pretty unfamiliar with them. I've never heard of Eircom setting the modems up such that you can't adjust settings when you aren't on DSL, its possible of course it just sounds unlikely. If they have then your options are limited, are you 100% sure that you can't log in and that you're not just looking at the page after login that is informing you that you're not connected to DSL.

Thanks for the reply. My computers definitely won't let me log onto the IP address unfortunately, I think if I could overcome this I could fix the problems. Do you have any idea why it won't let me onto the page? Could it be a firewall or something perhaps?


Every time I try to go to the page I get this message:


The connection has timed out

The server at 192.168.1.254 is taking too long to respond.

* The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
moments.

* If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
connection.

* If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

dub45

Your ex Eircom router is really not ideal for the purpose you are using it - you would be far better off with what is known as a cable router - your eircom model has an integrated modem for dealing with the dsl signal that Eircom uses.

With the netopia you have a combination of a dsl modem and a wireless router. the netopia is constantly looking for a dsl signal at its input. In the meantime it is sending out a wireless signal irrespective of whether it is connected to the internet or not.

Trying connectiong to the netopia directly by ethernet cable (or by wireless as you did accientally before) - the http://192.168.1.254 address should allow you to do that. (Disconnect the netopia from the other modem during the exercise) You sould be able to access the wireless settings that way. Make your changes save them and then go back to your day to day set up.

moretothegirl

Thanks for the reply, I'm starting to think the hassle with the eircom router isn't worth it and I think I might just buy another router.
In my attempt to secure my network I decided to reset my router. This did put the old WEP back on, however, in doing so I seem to have knocked out the connection between my modem and router. When I connect to my wireless it says there is no internet access so it seems that my broadband is not being transmitted from my modem to my router anymore.

I have decided to see if I can fix this problem and if failing to do so, I'll just get a new router!!

Thanks for all the replies here, and if anybody has any idea how to get my router and modem back talking to each other that would be great! When I was having my broadband installed the guy did something to my router/modem to make them work together and I don't have a clue what that was!