TP-Link Wireless Adapter not Wanting to Connect to Linksys router

czehner13

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Aug 26, 2014
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Preface: I don't have much experience in Networking so sorry if I present stupid questions or sound dumb in general. Also I posted a thread before this but it was never answered and no one was responding so I made it into a new question since it never got solved. I realize this may be frowned upon but I truly need this solved because my computer has been sitting useless for weeks now.

I just had a computer built and put in my own wireless adapter (TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 Dual Band Wireless N900 PCI Express Adapter to be extremely exact) and it worked just fine with my Belkin router. I move into my new apartment with a Linksys EA6300 as our community (me and my roommates are the only ones using it) router. Everyone else (including myself on my laptop) can get on the internet with no problems at all. My desktop however, will recognize both bands coming in but is being extremely stubborn.

There are three different things that have happened so far:

1. It will connect okay but the connection is very unstable and will disconnect whenever it seems to feel like it. When it does disconnect I'll usually have to wait ~20 minutes for the connection to come back on.

2. One band will prompt me for the security key, and I will type it in (I am 100% positive it is the right key as I have done it countless times) and it will keep telling me "Security Key Mismatch"

3. The other band will prompt me for the security key and I type it in but instead of doing the security key mismatch it will just plain tell me it was unable to connect.

I have tried resetting both my router and my adapter, completely uninstalling and reinstalling everything to do with my adapter twice, and have been scouring anything related for hours upon end with no avail. Is it possible that the adapter and router aren't communicating simply because they're different brands? I can't seem to figure anything out, and any help would be very much appreciated.

Also I know it's not that our internet is bogged down, there are 3-5 people on the internet at a time the majority of the time but I've had to deal with this problem before and had little issue with it.
 
Solution
I've been messing around with a Lynksys wrt54g and found it won't connect to a TP-Link (TL-WR702N) Nano router. I had an spare wrt54g v6 that I flashed over to DD-WRT, and to my surprise it worked. So, hmm... I have seen post that say if you should try to keep your network gear to all the same manufacturer because the encryption aren't always compatible, and I believe this to be the case here.

Technical:
When I did the survey with the tp-link during setup (client mode), it acted like it connected to the lynksys but I don't think it ever did, its just a congratulations message that pops up, if it connects or not. Now, with the dd-wrt version, get the same message, but when I connected the nano to my Blue Ray player, it pulled an IP...

czehner13

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Aug 26, 2014
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I do not own an ethernet cable long enough to reach my router, it's a shoddy apartment, so no internal ethernet connections through the apartment.
 

christinebcw

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Sep 8, 2012
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I assume some other computers have USB WiFi adapters? Can you snag one of those, load its drivers and meaasure their performance in your location?

(If this is a Location problem, then perhaps antenna extension cables will allow you to mount antenna in a better location.)
 

czehner13

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Unfortunately, all other computers are laptops, and thus have internal adapters. I am getting an ASUS AC1200 USB dongle adapter to see if that is the solution. If not, then I guess I'm down $50 but I will know that it is the router, not the adapter.
 

czehner13

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So my other adapter hasn't arrived yet but I tried messing with the router and discovered that it works like a dream (at least, compared to what it was) ever since I moved it from behind the tv to on top of it (literally inches.) Evidently, from what I collected, the TV probably caused interference since it was in front of the signal.
 

christinebcw

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Sep 8, 2012
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Uh. Note to self: First, above all else, ask how deeply buried an interference-sensitive WiFi device is.

"Is it sealed in a lead-lined coffin?"

"Is it stuck inside refrigerator units?"

"Is the nuclear reactor's core sitting on top of the antennas?"

"Is it stuck behind a TV set?"

By the way, getting it FAR from the TV set will work better, too. "How far?" As far as you can.
 

bigdog12

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Dec 16, 2014
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I've been messing around with a Lynksys wrt54g and found it won't connect to a TP-Link (TL-WR702N) Nano router. I had an spare wrt54g v6 that I flashed over to DD-WRT, and to my surprise it worked. So, hmm... I have seen post that say if you should try to keep your network gear to all the same manufacturer because the encryption aren't always compatible, and I believe this to be the case here.

Technical:
When I did the survey with the tp-link during setup (client mode), it acted like it connected to the lynksys but I don't think it ever did, its just a congratulations message that pops up, if it connects or not. Now, with the dd-wrt version, get the same message, but when I connected the nano to my Blue Ray player, it pulled an IP address from the dd-wrt router, not itself (tp-link), the default gateway was the dd-wrt and so I everything worked (DNS and interernet access) as it should. Before, when trying the lynksys as the router, the tp-link I don't think ever connected to it because the blue ray player only got an IP from the tp-link, and that was also the default gateway. Even if went static IP, I couldn't reach the lynksys router, and unfortunetly the blue ray player doesn't have a browser so I could pull up the tp-link to check its status. I know sounds complicated, but believe me it worked on the converted lynksys to dd-wrt, and the DD-WRT is awesome by the way.

Anyway, I hope this helps.
 
Solution