EE bright box problem with wireless

Hi,

orange (EE) is my home broadband provider. I have a bright box router and for the past few months everything was fine until yesterday. Im not able to connect to router wirelessly both using laptop and smartphone. I can connect to router through the cable and everything works perfectly fine. if i try to connect wirelessly on my laptop it says connected and no internet access. i contacted ee to sort this out and the first guy was unable to help me and hanged out on my ( [censored] ). the other ee technican sort this out but... what i was asked to do: switch wireless mode from 11b+11g+11n to 11B+11g. i also had to change security settings and that's it. job done. wireless is back up and running but....the speed of the wireless conection decreased substantialy. on the cable i get 15megs download on the speedtest.net wireless 0.5meg and it used to be 15megs before the problems and the change of wireless mode. is there anything that i could do to fix it cos i just cant be asked to speak to those ee technicans anymore.

thanks in advance for any help

Have you configure on your LAN (Local Area Network) with a static IP address for your wireless network connection?

I found the Bright Box reserved IP address settings did not to work at all for me!
I have always configured my wireless and Ethernet networks with a LAN static IP address.

http://portforward.com/networking/staticip.htm

hi,

i'll try this. i made one more phone call to EE regarding the slow wireless connection and after 2h of tests and fiddling about they have decided to sent me a new router to see if it will help.

In reply to a post by kikiloko:

switch wireless mode from 11b+11g+11n to 11B+11g.

If wireless is slow you really should not be using wireless 11b.

Unless you have a very, very old wireless device use 11g + 11n.

If everything is 11n then just use .11n.

In reply to a post by kikiloko:

hi,

i'll try this. i made one more phone call to EE regarding the slow wireless connection and after 2h of tests and fiddling about they have decided to sent me a new router to see if it will help.

They offer another router when they don't have a clue and need to gets you off their backs.

I reckon if you configure on your LAN (Local Area Network) with a static IP address for your wireless network, you will be able to find your wireless connection and get your "N" speeds back.

How to configure your Bright Box wireless router DHCP server range.

To configure EE Bright Box router DHCP server range. Go... Advanced Set-Up > Accept > DHCP.

Lease time: Forever
Start IP: 192.168.1.21
End IP: 192.168.1.250

This will give you 25 LAN static IP addresses 1 to 20 and 251 to 255.


Example: Configure PC wireless connection

Select Use the following IP address.
IP address: 192.168.1.2 <--- your PC wireless card IP address.
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default gateway: 192.168.1.1 <--- your Bright box router IP address

Select Use the following DNS server addresses
Preferred DNS server: 193. 36. 79. 101
Alternate DNS server: 193.36.79.100

Why do you insist on advising to use static addressing within home networks where it is not necessary????
If the user follows your advice and then tries to use the machine on another network in future, this could cause huge problems. Static addressing is rarely a solution and certainly isn't in this case!

Hear hear! This poster has a habit of drawing false conclusions.

This static IP advice has nothing to do with OP's issue, which is lack of wireless connection. I had refrained to responding to this point until the OP tried it and found it made no diff.

Yes it is a recurring theme which I have had a rant about in the past.
Nothing much seems to have changed with regards to it being suggested as the panacea to every question mentioning networking.

The problem of being connected but no internet access can be caused by a number of things, and using static addressing on a wireless interface of a (client) device is almost never the right answer (in fact one of the few examples I can think of is for the ends of a wireless bridge link where in any case the addresses of those ends may not matter to network using the link).

E7er never really explains why the cause must always be dynamic addressing or else how the suggested steps magically fix any problem and in any case the OP hasn't asked how to port forward something to the wireless device either.

(to the OP)
My general advice on wireless is that on anything newer than 5 years old,

Firstly, for b/g/n devices check the router or access point is set for 20MHz (or failing that, Auto 20/40MHz) rather than 40MHz only as some clients cannot reliably connect in that mode.

Then if you are using a passphrase for wireless security choose a security mode of WPA2-AES (CCMP) on the router as the devices can usually perform this optimally, and try to find driver or OS updates if it seems to support WEP or WPA(1) only (or TKIP only).

But if having problems or are trying to establish a connection for the first time then fall back to no security and add encryption when you know the devices work together in that mode.

Be prepared to "forget this network" on client devices then look for the network to join again (old settings including wrong security mode can cause problems).

Edited by prlzx (Tue 30-Apr-13 20:54:09)

Sensible advice that actually addresses the problem in hand and not some guesswork like "Solution A worked for my issue X. Therefore it must work for your unrelated issue Y" .