Exactly 2 months ago, I posted about my trials with a Linksys WRT54G router. Today, I was playing with a hand-me-down Toshiba Tecra 9000 that looks like it was the puck in an Olympic Hockey game and decided to try out the wireless. I knew one of my neighbors had an unsecured connection (and they do not appear to be using it much...) so I "borrowed" it to test the wireless of the hand-me-down (story on it later). I got connected and was able to hit a few web sites and even apt-get update/upgrade my Ubuntu installation on the hand-me-down. Okay, the wireless on it worked even though it had been handled very roughly.
What does all that have to do with my old Linksys? Well, Dakboy said I should troubleshoot more and I thought, what the hay, I am finished with my chores for the day so I have the time to waste on it. So I dug it, plugged it in and began playing with the config.
First thing I did was a hard reset. Nada, still no WAN, but I had LAN. Internet port FUBARed? Maybe. To test, I cascaded it from my Netgear (a little configuring had to be done...thank you Linksys.com) and realized the internet port was live. Hmmmm, what was the problem?
I noticed that Linksys had a firmware notice (from 2 months ago) that was 3 revs newer than mine so I figured, "what the heck...". I flashed the firmware on the router and still no internet.
I turned off EVERYTHING on the home net (server, 2 PC's, router, and cable modem) and waited 5 minutes. I powered up the cable modem and let it sync with Road Runner's network. Then I fired up the router and let it acquire an IP and then I hooked up the hockey puck (that is what I should name that laptop) and looked at the configuration of the router. Everything looked normal. I tried to get to the web via the laptop..no dice. I turned on the server (it was initially set as static IP so I changed it to DHCP for a test) and tried to get on the web...no luck. I fired up the main PC, "geekbox" in Windows mode and my Yahoo applets for weather and stocks connected. I was very surprised so I made sure all the cables were in the correct router (they were) and rebooted the laptop and the server. Both connected to the intarweb.
Last trick was to get the laptop connected wirelessly. I set the router security to wpa but only saw WEP on the laptop, so I downgraded the security on the router and entered the key in the laptop. It connected. So now all three machines are up and running on the Linksys router and it only took 1.5 hours.
I still have no idea why the router just 'stopped working' in first place, but at least for now it is running.
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