[SOLVED] Work Laptop with Fiber Router BGW320

[Exdeus]

Greetings all. Hopefully a fast question. Got AT&T fiber installed today with the BGW320 router/gateway. All of my systems are fully working but my wifes work laptop will not connect or identify the network as an available connection. Her work laptop is an Acer Travelmate P459. Is her laptop not compatible with the signals from the new router? If not, is there a USB plug I can get so that it can connect wirelessly? Laptop has this on the bottom of it: intel-7265ngw.

Thank you!!

 

[RealBeast]

Greetings all. Hopefully a fast question. Got AT&T fiber installed today with the BGW320 router/gateway. All of my systems are fully working but my wifes work laptop will not connect or identify the network as an available connection. Her work laptop is an Acer Travelmate P459. Is her laptop not compatible with the signals from the new router? If not, is there a USB plug I can get so that it can connect wirelessly? Laptop has this on the bottom of it: intel-7265ngw.

Thank you!!

Her laptop and your gateway both support 5GHz AC wireless. Do you see her wireless adapter in the device manager on her laptop and does it say that it is working? Is her laptop configured with a static address since it is a work machine? If so, just change it to a dynamic address in the wireless adapter setting in the network control panel.

Do you have your gateway set to broadcast an SSID? In other words can other wireless devices see your wireless network?

 

[Exdeus]

Her laptop and your gateway both support 5GHz AC wireless. Do you see her wireless adapter in the device manager on her laptop and does it say that it is working? Is her laptop configured with a static address since it is a work machine? If so, just change it to a dynamic address in the wireless adapter setting in the network control panel.

Do you have your gateway set to broadcast an SSID? In other words can other wireless devices see your wireless network?

Thank you for the reply. I just went into the settings on the router and SSID is enabled. It says "Home SSID enabled."

In regards to the laptop, it is on and finding multiple networks in the area, but mine is not coming up. The only interesting thing was this gateway kept my old gateways information, name and password. However everything connected seamlessly. Just not the laptop. I fiddled with the laptop and the ethernet had dynamic address as the current setting. Could not get into the WiFi side as there was no connection.

Anything I am missing here?

 

[RealBeast]

Did her wireless adapter show up in the Device Manager?

Had her work laptop ever connected to the old home network (the old router)?
If so go into the network control panel and select manage wireless networks and forget the old network, then restart and let it reacquire the new router. (and reenter security key).

 

[Exdeus]

Did her wireless adapter show up in the Device Manager?

Had her work laptop ever connected to the old home network (the old router)?
If so go into the network control panel and select manage wireless networks and forget the old network, then restart and let it reacquire the new router. (and reenter security key).

Yes her wireless adapter is showing up. I told it to forget the network and restarted. No luck at this point. Any other ideas? I've had her reach out to her tech support team as well.

 

[kanewolf]

Yes her wireless adapter is showing up. I told it to forget the network and restarted. No luck at this point. Any other ideas? I've had her reach out to her tech support team as well.

There are some things to think about. The 5Ghz channel might be one the laptop doesn't accept. 5Ghz channels are country specific. The WIFI driver for that laptop may not like the channel. Change from "auto" to channel 36 to test. The channel width might be incompatible. An 80Mhz channel width might be the problem. Change to manual and set the width to 40Mhz for 5Ghz.
If the router uses the same SSID (WIFI name) for both 2.4 and 5Ghz, that could cause confusion with the laptop. Manually set the SSIDs to unique values.

 

[Exdeus]

There are some things to think about. The 5Ghz channel might be one the laptop doesn't accept. 5Ghz channels are country specific. The WIFI driver for that laptop may not like the channel. Change from "auto" to channel 36 to test. The channel width might be incompatible. An 80Mhz channel width might be the problem. Change to manual and set the width to 40Mhz for 5Ghz.
If the router uses the same SSID (WIFI name) for both 2.4 and 5Ghz, that could cause confusion with the laptop. Manually set the SSIDs to unique values.

Oof...okay you have gone above my technical lack of expertise. I imagine that is relatively easy to do through the router configs? Don't want to explore and mess around too much and have it not work as it is needed for work as well at the moment. The modem/gateway is owned by the ISP, so some items are not available by default.

 

[kanewolf]

Oof...okay you have gone above my technical lack of expertise. I imagine that is relatively easy to do through the router configs? Don't want to explore and mess around too much and have it not work as it is needed for work as well at the moment. The modem/gateway is owned by the ISP, so some items are not available by default.

Yes, all the changes I describe are in the router configuration pages for wireless. I can't find a good manual for that device to guide you through the changes.

 

[Exdeus]

Yes, all the changes I describe are in the router configuration pages for wireless. I can't find a good manual for that device to guide you through the changes.

I just pulled up the config page and it is saying the below:

2.4 GHz Radio Enabled
5 GHz Radio 1 Enabled
5 GHz Radio 2 Enabled

I don't see anything on this bad boy to change it.

 

[kanewolf]

The only thing I can find is that you are supposed to login through the ATT smarthome manager --- Which is a reason I would NEVER get that POS hardware ...

 

[Exdeus]

The only thing I can find is that you are supposed to login through the ATT smarthome manager --- Which is a reason I would NEVER get that POS hardware ...

Yeah you can, but when you go to advanced settings it still goes to the main router profile page through the IP address. Once in there I get most options, just not sure how to mess with it. Everything works for now.

Do you know if there is just a cheap USB plug in I can get for her laptop?

 

[kanewolf]

Yeah you can, but when you go to advanced settings it still goes to the main router profile page through the IP address. Once in there I get most options, just not sure how to mess with it. Everything works for now.

Do you know if there is just a cheap USB plug in I can get for her laptop?

I don't know. "Work" laptops usually have restrictions on hardware and software changes.

 

[RealBeast]

Yes her wireless adapter is showing up. I told it to forget the network and restarted. No luck at this point. Any other ideas? I've had her reach out to her tech support team as well.

I would download and run the free application technitium. Select the wireless adapter and just spoof it a new MAC address.

It works quite often and cannot actually change the hardware address, it just alters it in the OS and can be changed back.

But as kanewolf says, as a work laptop it might be buttoned down from changes, so it is only a chance, but worth a quick try.