How do I set up a D-Link router without an internet connection

[brian3000]

I want to set up a wi-fi network with no internet connection. I only have dial-up so there will be no internet connected to the network, just computers and a wi-fi printer. It is a DIR-601. D-Link's Wizard requires an active ethernet web connection to work (which I don't have).

Can this be done? Any idea where the instructions to do this might be?

Thanks

 

[mbreslin1954]

Just turn on the router and connect a PC to one of the LAN ports (not the Internet port). Find out from the documentation what address the router will use, it should be either 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1. Or look at the Status of the wired Ethernet port you have connected to the router, it should have handed out an IP address to your PC, and if you look in the Details of your link Status you should see the address of the Gateway -- that IP address of the Gateway is the address of the router.

Now open up an Internet Explorer window and type in the address of the Gateway (router) in the URL address bar at the top, and you should get a login prompt from the router. Your documentation should provide the default userid and password for your login, but from what I found on the web, the password is blank. Once logged in you can configure the router.

If you don't get a valid IP address assigned to your PC in the range of 192.168.x.xxx, and instead have something like 169.xxx.xxx.xxx, let me know, it means DHCP is not working on the router and you'll have to manuall assign your PC an address in the range of the router's IP address.

 

[brian3000]

OK. I will try this in a few minutes. This is all new to me so assume I know very little.

I will try this and report back.

 

[mbreslin1954]

Let me know if you need detailed steps on how to find out your PC's IP address and gateway.

 

[brian3000]

This got me to the same dead end I found last night. Once connected with the config screen, I answered a few questions then it asks me to plug in my modem so it's Wizard can use the web to do the set up. Of course I can't do that so it eventually gives up and says no router found or something like that. At that point the only choices I have are Retry and Cancel.

There is no link to a manual set up and I'm not sure what to search for.

 

[brian3000]

FWIW the manual is " DIR-601_Manual_US.pdf "

 

[brian3000]

Maybe what I need is on page 38. Subset Mask.

 

[mbreslin1954]

Subnet mask is 255.255.255.0

If you haven't already found it, here is the manual:
http://www.dlink.com/-/media/Consumer_Products/DIR/DIR%20601/Manual/DIR-601_Manual_US.pdf

You should be able to hit "cancel" and then just manually configure it. You want to get to what is shown on Page 20, then click on the Manual Internet Connection setup. You don't really want to configure an Internet, which means you don't really want a router. A router routes packets between different networks, but you don't have different networks, you only have one network. So in effect you want to make your router into a switch that does DHCP (hands out IP addresses).

So the only thing you have to do, once you are able to configure it, is to turn off routing.

 

[genz]

Brian, just so you know, the Wizard is a pointless time sink for you. It's primary purpose is not to 'set up' the router in the way you want it to, but to connect the existing network to the internet, from a few seconds the router is switched on it is functional enough to hand out IP addresses (like postal addresses for each device to send data to another) and allow you to collect each of your devices (PC's printers etc).

Your primary directive is to understand how to get those IP addresses so you know how to tell your printer how to contact your PC and vice versa, and then run the setups/Wizards for the non-PC items in particular, the Wizard will not help you because it is built to connect the network you already have to the web... and you aren't going to do that.


D-Link happens to make a lot of assumptions in it's documentation with the aim of making things sound simpler but actually further confusing the issue, for example, when you log into the router, as pointed out above, you should see a list of devices under the banner labeled 'Computer Name' despite your Printer, and anything else you connect to the router being there too. Thos would have been caled 'Device list' or 'Connected IPs' by a company that took slightly longer to realise that routers don't just connect computers.

 

[brian3000]

Thanks. I've had it with this thing today. Yes. I eventually got to the screen shown on page 20. I think I'm at least pointed in the right direction now.

I haven't messed with networks in ten years and I've forgotten the little that I knew then. I will admit there seems to be a mind boggling number of settings in this setup.

I did see that the desktop was recognized with it's specific device name so there's some progress...I guess. My wi-fi printer isn't even here yet so there's no hurry.



I might start from scratch tomorrow.

My library has a "Wireless Home Networking for Dummies" book in stock. I think I'll pick it up tomorrow and start from a more comfortable place. The terms in those setup screens were pretty much meaningless to me...very frustrating.

Thanks for the help!

 

[genz]

I did see that the desktop was recognized with it's specific device name so there's some progress...I guess. My wi-fi printer isn't even here yet so there's no hurry.

You don't need to understand the majority of it. Just IP addresses, how to put a password on your wi-fi and disabling firewalls and Access Point settings (AP is for businesses that install Wi-Fi in shops and want to isolate every user from each other and just provide them with internet). Have a little root in the menu's for your wireless SSID (which will tell you what your name is when you connect your PC via wi-fi) and see if it connects, if it does don't muck around any more. Seriously, buying a book about networking will be a waste of money because you will either not use it, or seriously muck up the default settings with little things it doesn't tell you. You router will be configured automatically to use DCHP which is what is known by Windows XP as "Zero Configuration" for a good reason. Like was said earlier, you don't really want a router to be anything more than a switch, that means most of the options are irrelavent anyway.

You connect your device to the SSID, it gives you an IP address and you're off, which you have done already ad seems to be fine. You then connect the other device (Printer in this example). You go back to the Windows computer and hit Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections, then right click your Wi-Fi dongle in the list of connections and hit 'Status'. It will show you a list containing all the settings that have been Automatically Set for you. You want to keep it this way (looking from the outside in) and leave your router to it's devices.

Note down your IP address in this list and your IPv4 default gateway. The former is the address you will give to your printer when you set it up, the latter is the address that the router holds for everyone else to connect to it. This is why you should not muck around with those settings yourself before you connect your devices. Your router KNOWS what's in the area and will assign itself a (radio) channel and IP based on both non-interference, security and standards... all of which a months worth of research might teach you half of.

For example, that subnet mask stuff MUST be 255.255.255.0 or 255.255.255.255 because that's an international standard for home networks, your 'internal IP' (which is the only one you will have because the external IP is actually the one given to you by the ISP to denote your home as a 'device' on their routers) must be within the ranges of 192.168.0.0 and 192.168.255.255 as defined as a cleared space by international internet standard. The intenet basically has nothing on these addresses so that it's impossible to have a website pretend to be a device on your network and vice versa (which could be a security nightmare). Now you could choose to ignore this you set your router IP as something outside that range and things would appear to work fine, but you will encounter apps that will crash because they don't believe your printer is at home and things that will fail with no explanation, there are all kinds of problems like this in networking. This is why home networking is really best left to zero config systems built into your router.