Using a work computer at home
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Using a work computer at home
Hi all,
I have a work computer that I use at home on my wireless network. Sometimes when I start the laptop and enable the wireless radio, everything works fine. I get connected to my wireless with the proper IP address (192.168.15.1xx). No problems.
However, sometimes when I turn on my laptop and enable the radio, my wireless card recognizes my router, but it gives me some crazy network address of 169.something. When that happens, I cannot get on the web.
sometimes if I leave my computer on for awhile and walk away, I can come back and this will have happened.
In both cases it seems to be random with no clear logic behind it.
The only way that I have been able to figure out how to correct this is to disable wireless radio, disconnect and reconnect the powercord for my router, then enable the radio. Usually works fine after that.
I haven't seen this question asked exactly and can't figure out what is going on. It has stumped some of my IT friends.
Thanks.
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Hello,jigslincoln & Welcome
Hmm let me ask this the wireless Mode has it's own firewall Yes if so
are you running on a Router as well if so try it without the Router see
if that is any help at all.
HGD
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The 169.x.x.x is a local IP range used when the laptop cannot get a valid IP address from the network. If you have no other server on your network, and the laptop often does have a 192.168.15.x address, then that means that your router is running DHCP. DHCP is the system used to assign valid IP addresses (192.168.15.1, 192.168.15.2, etc) to any PC on your network that asks for an address.
If you're finding that the laptop doesn't always get a valid LAN IP address, then it could either be that the laptop isn't requesting one, i.e. it's not registering on the network properly, or it could be that DHCP on the router is intermittently playing up. The fact that resetting the router can fix the problem suggests that it's the router that is at fault.
DHCP, on many routers, will have a 'lease duration period'. This is the amount of time that a PC or laptop will use its allocated 192.x.x.x address before the lease expires and it has to ask the DHCP server (i.e. the router) for a new address. By default, this is normally set to 3 days. Check out the configuration settings on your router and see if you can increase the lease duration period. Make it allocate addresses for as long as it can - you might even have an 'unlimited' or 'forever' option.
This isn't actually correcting what the fault is but it's basically telling the network that, once your laptop has an IP address that it can use, that it will continue to use that for a long time so that you do not see the problem again until that lease period has expired.
If that doesn't sort it out (and I expect that it will), an alternative that you might like to try is, next time you get the problem, go to the Start Menu, select Run, type in cmd. This takes you to the Command Prompt window (basically a DOS box). At the command prompt, type in ipconfig /release and hit Enter. Once you get a confirmation that the IP address has been released, type in ipconfig /renew. This will ask the DHCP server (i.e. the router) for a new IP address again.
Let us know how you get on 
