Help with my wireless network

[STXBoomyer]

I hate to do this to you guys since there are so many other threads about this, but i have read through them all and none of them helped me...

I have a linksys 802.11b wireless router that i am using to share my broadband (road runner) connection. Currently we have two desktops wired to the router, and two laptops connecting through the wireless. Both desktops are windows systems, one windows 98 and one Win XP, one laptop is Win XP, and the other laptop is my powerbook.

Initially i can get a wireless connection to the router, but if my computer is taken out of range of the network or in sleep mode for to long it reassigns itself and ip address. When this happens it cannot connect to the internet because its not a valid ip address for the router.

I can re-connect to the wireless network only if i "power cycle" the router. This means i have to unplug the power to the router for 5 seconds and then plug it back it. According to the linksys people this reassigns all the computers ip adresses. The router will give my powerbook a valid ip address and everything will be glorious for a few days. Does anyone have any idea why the powerbook won't keep this ip address, or let me assign it a static one to work? None of the windows machines have a problem. Thanks for your time guys...

[LeeTom]

I don't have the Linksys, so I can't say exactly, but this might help:

- Check the lease time of its DHCP server. Messing with this setting might yield results.

- My D-Link router can be set up to assign certain MAC addresses to certain IP addresses. DHCP is on, but if the same computer comes up, it is always assigned the same IP.

Alternatively, you could set up a Location called "home" on your powerbook and give it its own IP address, instead of going through DHCP.

Lee Tom

[emw]

Don't know if LeeTom's advice worked for you, but I have a Linksys (G) router and don't experience this problem - I don't know why you'd need to recycle the router to get a new DHCP IP for your Powerbook.

The most you should have to do is go to your Mac's System Preferences and change the network preference and either cycle your airport TCP/IP on and off (be sure to Apply Changes), or select a location that has a manually assigned IP address and switch back to DHCP (and Apply Changes between each selection).

Otherwise, the Linksys doesn't require that you use DHCP to get an address. As LeeTom suggested, just hardcode an IP address based on the DHCP address you get from the Linksys router.

For example, if the Linksys supplies you with a 192.168.1.103 DHCP IP address, you can pick any 192.168.1.x address where 'x' is not equal to your router IP (likely 1) or any of your PC's IP address. The Linksys defaults to start DHCP assigns at 100, so if you pick something like 192.168.1.90 (in my example) you'd be fine.

[STXBoomyer]

Thanks for the help guys, i'll give both a shot and see what works...