I need some wireless networking help, please...
 

I have 4 pc's (windoze) wired through a DSL router. I want to connect my new centrino laptop (with XP) via its wireless networking capability, so I have purchased a wireless access point (wap) that connects to my regular Ethernet switch.

I am able to configure the wap box via one of the hard-wired pc's, and now obviously I have to set up the laptop to talk to the wap. I presume that I have to add a new network connection with the appropriate SSID, IP & gateway settings corresponding to the new wap box''s settings? However, nothing that I try seems to work, the laptop shows no wireless networks that I can connect to. I am sitting 2 feet from the wap box. WEP is disabled.

How close or far apart should the wap box's IP & gateway addresses be from my regular machines' settings for the DSL router? What am I doing wrong here?

Networking gurus, please help!

LeRoux

Why not just get a wireless DSL router?

The only distance issue would be if it's too far away, you can be as close as you want.

Do you have any firewall products installed? Is XP's firewall configured?

Are the wireless cards and WAP box from the same MFG?

Disconnect yourself from the 'net, turn off the firewalls, and start from there.

Thom brings up some good points. I have a Belkin Wireless Router to work with my Cable Modem at home. It works great, 54g all that crap. I got TiVo and didn't want to have it plugged into the wall, so I got a couple of USB Wireless Adapters. TiVo only supported a couple of brands, so I got a Lynksyss one and a Net Gear one. No matter what I did the Net Gear one woudl not recognize the net work, the Lynksyss one did just fine. Ofcourse the Net Gear one was cheaper, but what do you do.

Do you have your network set up to broadcast?

Gateway, DNS server should be the same for all computers on your network.

If you are broadcasting your SSID on the access point, then Win XP should see that it is there and prompt you to connect to it, and then prompt for security information if needed.

I actually had a similar problem with my new HP notebook.

Could not get it to see the wireless router even when I was sitting next to it.

My Macs saw it fine.

As a test I created a wireless network using my Mac as the router and the PC saw that just fine.

So I assumed their was some compatability issue with the HP and router.

Had a PCMCIA card that came with the router so I slapped that into the PC and got it configured, not ideal but whatever.

A day or so later the HP started connecting to the router using it's internal wireless all by itself. Don't know why but I removed the PCMCIA card and all is well with the world.

Try plugging the laptop into the WAP and reset up the WAP fromthe laptop.

Might be that there is a driver missing that will get sorted out that way.

Good luck.

Give us a little more technical info;

What brand laptop and what is the type of internal wireless adapter. Each brand has it's own different configuration interface because not many use the native WXP configuration utility for the wireless adapters.

For example - my IBM T41 has an IBM connection utility that I configure my wireless in - not WXP's native.

feel free to pm me.

Thanks so far, everyone.

It's a HP nx7010 centrino with built-in wireless adapter. The WAP is a D-Link DWL-2000AP+ (wow, I had to look twice on the box while typing that). I am broadcasting the SSID from the wap, but the laptop does not see any networks.

I had another similar HP seeing another wireless network with a Netgear wap just fine.

My fixed line network and DSL router work just fine for the four home/office PC's, I just wanted to get a wap for the new laptop so I can sit on the crapper and surf PP to annoy my wife :D . I don't need a wireless dsl router.

I'll try some of the suggestions and report back. Any other fresh ideas?

LeRoux