WRT56G connection issues with WPA

[hjbertie]

I recently changed from WEP to WPA Pre shared security on my Linksys WRT54G router. I now have wifi connection problems with my ipad and Sony blu ray player. I have to turn the devices off and the router off to re-establish the connections. Any suggestions? The constant turning off/on is getting pretty inconvenient.

 

[g90814]

You're using a very old router with newer devices. I'd suggest flashing it with DD-WRT open source firmware, or upgrade to a newer router.

Do you just have WPA? If you have WPA2 its even better, and might work better with your devices. Also use AES encryption if you have that option too.

 

[Ralston18]

Hello hjbertie,

I am not aware of any specific reason that changing from WEP to WPA Pre-shared would cause the connectivity problems you are experiencing.

If I correctly understand your posting the ipad and Sony Blu-ray do work sometimes. That means that both devices support WPA Pre-shared security and that, to some extent, wireless connectivity is there and working. In my mind that rules out any misconfigurations or some unexpected/unknown fallback to a default setting.

However, the symptoms/problems you describe are very similar to a problem I had with a home network:

Some network devices were assigned static IP addresses. Other devices were using DHCP. Not everything got turned on in the same order over any given time frame.

What would happen is a device being assigned an IP via DHCP would be given (by the router) an IP address used by another device already assigned the same static IP address but off line. If the second device joined the network later on then there would be, of course, an IP address conflict.

Turning off the router forced it to reassign DHCP addresses and if the devices with static addresses were already on then those IP addresses would not be assigned by the router. Likewise, turning devices on and off would remove conflicting IP addresses. Really strange network behavior over all and mostly noticed when trying to connect to various shares on the designated “static” devices.

(FYI: That was all resolved by setting up the router to reserve the desired static IP addresses for certain devices via their respective MAC addresses. A printer, a NAS, and an iPad were the “static” devices.)

Two suggestions:

1) check all of your devices to see if they are configured for static or DHCP IP addresses – look for conflicts remembering that order matters.

2) Download a wireless network scanner that can display devices and their assigned IP addresses. I use Wi-Fi Network Monitor: very simple, free, and you can customize the IP range being scanned. Easy to run scans and see what IP addresses are being used and by what device/devices.

I trust that the above “experience” and suggestions will help towards a solution for you. If not, please correct any misunderstandings on my part along with more details about the problem. Thanks.

Take care,

Ralston18