Confused: Chaining Routers, Static IP Involved

[kawaris]

I've used these forums as a resource for years, but I couldn't find a solution to my problem this time (or my search skill is bad). Here's the situation:

I currently live at my cousin's place overseas. Her Internet connection is one Ethernet line from a community network, which I assume is some master router. To configure the network, one must manually input the IP address (static), subnet mask, router IP, and DNS server.

I would like to use this Ethernet connection with my WRT54G2 Linksys router for wireless Internet access. I somehow managed to do the first time I set up the router by resetting the router and connecting the cable to one of the LAN ports. However, the connection stopped working after a week or so. Now I can't figure out what to do.

Another problem is that I can't seem to access the router settings. When I connect a cable to my router, I get a self-assigned IP address with some random gateway (127.0.0.1). The normal 192.168.1.1 doesn't even appear when use the terminal command [ netstat -f inet -rn ]. I run MacOS 10.5

Last two notes:
1) I can hook up the community line to my router LAN and use another Ethernet cable (with the same manual config) to access the Internet.
2) Twice, I have been able to access the default 192.168.1.1 router address by unplugging/replugging an Ethernet cable. However, this is not reproducible, and when I did have access to the router this way, it only worked for 20 seconds or so.
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Any help would be much appreciated! If I could figure out how to access my router consistently, things should be a lot easier. Thanks in advance!

 

[Nothinman]

127.0.0.1 isn't random, it's localhost.

Without more details about her Internet connection it's hard to say where the problem lies. As long as the "outside" range doesn't conflict with the default internal (in your case 192.168.1.0/24) it should work just fine. If you plug your PC into the router but leave the Internet side unplugged an you connect to the router consistently?

 

[Fardringle]

Reset the router to factory default settings to undo whatever you might have done so far. Connect your computer to a LAN port (or wireless) on the router and configure the router's WAN IP address, DNS, and Gateway settings to match the static IP information for the public network. Set up Wireless encryption as desired (WPA2 is preferred if your computers can use it). Attach the public network's cable to the WAN port on your router. Unless they have done something to specifically prohibit the use of personal routers on the community network, any device attached to your router will now have access to the Internet and will also be isolated from intrusion by other computers on the community network.