Re: My Wireless Sharing Problem -- Specifics


"The Rejuvenated Techie" <nevertell@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:46153b99$0$17381$4c368faf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I'll try this again, and I won't be vague at all. ;)

I have a home office network consisting of 7 computers, 6 of which run Wiudows XP Pro SP2. The other one is Windows Vista Ultimate (the machine I am on now). It's patched daily automatically by our friends at Microsoft.

I use Bright House/RoadRunner for my cable modem ISP.

File and print sharing is set up so that all computers can print to and share with two other machines. The router I was using before moving to wireless was a LinkSys BEFSR81, firmware revision 2.51.1 It was a perfectly functioning network for what I wanted to do. Then I moved to wireless.

The changes:

I installed a LinkSys WRT54GS, version 6.0, with firmware revision 1.52.0. I have two Dell Latitude laptops with built-in wireless capability. On all other machines I installed LinkSys PCI wireless adapters, model WMP54GS (with SpeedBooster).

The setup worked nicely as far as throughput and reliability were concerned. I had a problem with dropped connections on the router, but I found the cause and eradicated the problem (it was being caused by one of the laptops going into sleep mode while connected to the network -- why it screwed with the router itself I don't know, just that it did).

In the network neighborhood on the XP machines they could all see other, and all computers showed up on the Vista network map as being in the same network.

WPA-Personal with TKIP encryption is the protection scheme. Again, no problems with that.

I made sure all of the adapters were operating in infrastructure mode instead of ad-hoc.

I soon discovered that NONE of the machines could communicate with each other in terms of file and printer sharing. The exception is a Brother MFC-665CW printer/fax with wireless support. As long as the Brother control center software is installed on each machine, they can print to it. They cannot, however, install via Network Neighborhood or through the Windows printer setup in the control panel. It is only through the software they are able to do so.

After spending 24 hours researching the problem on the 'Net, I finally decided to disable wireless on a few workstations and hook them up again via CAT-5 only. The WRT54GS still would not allow the machines to share. At last, I removed the WRT54GS and reinstalled the BEFSR81. Voila, I had file and printer sharing back, even with the Vista machine.

I believe I have isolated the problem to the WRT54GS OR perhaps the setup of the individual wireless adapters. On the laptops the wireless worked out of the box -- all I had to do was enter the security information. When I installed the wireless adapters for the PCs, I did nothing out of the ordinary in setup. Again, general connectivity to the router and to the Internet was smooth as silk. But internally, the machines will not transact with each other.

Getting back to the wireless router (WRTG54GS), I will conclude by saying that it shipped with the most current firmware (according to the LinkSys Website) and I have made absolutely no changes to the routers optional settings, except, of course, to enable the WPA-Personal security and to enable SSID broadcasts.

There it is. I have to make this work via wireless, or I have to take all this stuff back to Office Depot for a return. Please help if you can.

Thank you.

Briefly disable the personal security encryption. Keep the SSID. See if they can connect. That will at least eliminate a possibility. You might also back everything off to Wireless 'b' temporarly to establish a baseline. I note that you did say that all computers have Internet connectivity. My suggestions were to just get a base line.


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