Strange Modem/Router Behaviour

[isro1]

Hello,

I live in an apartment building. In each room there is a network socket into which you connect your network cable which goes into your PC. Then when you go to google.com it opens up a login page where you enter your room number and password and after that you can use the internet.

It seems that when you connect a modem (and router?) to that socket, other users from the building are not redirected to the login page anymore, but they get a "cannot connect to the internet" page instead.

Thus, we got an SMS from that landlord saying that we shouldn't connect modems or routers directly to the wall socket.

As I plan to connect a router to the wall socket, I am wondering if I will create the same problem.

I understand that if you connect a modem, then other user computers might try to connect through your modem to the internet and get that error and a router connected incorrectly (using the LAN port) might give them DHCP IPs, but since a router just transforms the wired connection into wireless, there shouldn't be a problem... is that correct? I mean a wireless router on the network should be similar to a computer and thus other computers shouldn't try to connect to it, especially through the WAN port which is the only cable connected to it (that goes to the wall socket). Right?

I plan to use a DLink Wireless N300 Multi-WAN router --- >http://www.dlink.com.au/home-solutions/wireless-n300-3g-4g-multi-wan-router

Thank you in advance for your replies

 

[JackMDS]

No precise way to know. It can do/be many things since the Landlord is in control of the connection.

I.e., you do not have your own connection but the wall outlet is part of the Building network and it is up to him/her and their central configuration.

 

[isro1]

Thanks for the reply jack. From another forum we came to the conclusion that what might have happened before was that other residents might have had DHCP server enabled on their routers which mightve been connected using their LAN ports. That way those routers would provide residents with IP addresses instead of the actual DHCP server and thus they couldn't connect to that server.

So, since I have turned DHCP off in the router and connected it using it's WAN port should I be ok?

It is really frustrating how complicated this is. All I want is for a device to take the data from the wire, transform it into wireless and pass it to my computer. The fact that even this simple task can lead to so many scenarios and complications is really ridiculous. That router should know to behave like a single computer on that network and its presence should be exactly the same as that of a single computer. Especially since I have just one laptop connected to it. And yet even this simple request seems to be rocket science with 1090 complications. Just to "translate" electrical impulses into waves.

 

[Fardringle]

It may work the way you have described it although if you turn DHCP off on your router you'll have to manually enter IP address, default gateway, and DNS server information on your devices in order to get online.

However, since you're trying to do something that the landlord has specifically said not to do, are you "OK"? Maybe not...

 

[isro1]

Fardringle, thank you for your reply as well. I did all that and it works. Also, I turned on the MAC filter...

I think the landlord said we shouldn't do that just because it's way easier to tell people not to do it than to explain to them how to do it properly. We've had problems before and I assume this was the easiest fix.

Since Im paying $1000 a month rent for one single room in a middle of nowhere neighbourhood of Melbourne, I think I deserve the luxury of wireless lol... )