Cable Modem vs Router
 

I just moved and had to set up with Comcast again, I couldn't find my old WEP key, and when I tried to reset it so i could start over. The router is a linksys befw11s4.

When we tried to get it to work (I had a more tech savvy friend help), it was discovered that apparently the modem to router connection was not getting a DNS setting that would work. When I hardwire the connection it works (that's how I'm posting), but we want a wireless network.

Because it is an old router, Linksys wants to charge $30 to diagnose it, but if that's the case, I would rather just get a new router.

Any ideas?

Do you not have any modern wireless devices? You're taking a serious speed hit by sticking with that 802.11 B router instead of upgrading to G or N.

That said, if your modem is working, your router should work, too, regardless of age. Try a different DNS?

https://www.opendns.com/start

How often do you max out an 11MB/s connection? Is your cable connection even that fast? The only time I've had slowdowns was PC-to-PC file transfers over the network.

You need to reset the modem without any devices attached to it except the router. Then see if you get an ip (connect to the router using the 192.x.x.x address on your computer). See with the ip address is on the router. Hopefully your router and your cable modem are not trying to use the same subnet. Also look at what the router gets for dns servers. Any easy test to see if the problem is dns is to trying pinging a website directly by the domain address. If it works using the ip and not the name then it is usually an easy fix.

My guess is that it is not the dns and is more likely dhcp.

OK that seemed to work, except, now my wife's computer connects to the network when I put WPA on, yet my laptop will only connect while unsecured. Any ideas there, or just stayed unsecured.

On a completely unrelated note, holy crap can puppy farts stink.

You probably need to update drivers for your laptop's wireless card to the most recent version. Our laptops at work tend to shit the bed on WPA2 Enterprise unless the latest Broadcomm drivers are installed.

yes update drivers, if you can't get wpa to work then try wep. Also when trying wpa make sure you have the same setting (tkip or aes) on both the router and the devices you are connecting.