US Robotics router problem

[Dries]

Hi,
I have problems reaching my USRobotics router. The model is USR988000. My aim is to connect 2 computers (1 winXP, 1 MacOSX) to the internet. My first step in this proces is reaching the router from my XP machine. I am absolutely sure that my ethernet card is installed okay. (I can connect to my ISP directly). The tcp/ip protocol is installed correctly. (I can ping localhost and a manually configured ip address.) To pin the problem down, I'm doing all my testing without connecting the WAN port on my router to my D-link ADSL modem. So my ethernet card (3com Etherlink III, generic 3C509b) is connected with a straight through UTP cabel to Lan port 1 on my router. The led on my ethernet card is lit as well as the Link/Act led on my router. The power led is blinking once a second, the status led is not lit. Win XP tells me in a pop up that ethernet is active at 10Mbit/sec.
The problem is that when I manually configure my IP settings to 192.168.123.201 for my XP machine, subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and gateway 192.168.123.254 (the default) I cannot ping my gateway. ("destination host unreachable")
When I try to configure IP through DHCP (which is enabled by default in the router), my machine gets the rather strange IP address 169.254.164.224 assigned with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 and the gateway address is empty.
I read in the manual that I have to reset my router by unpowering it, hold the reset button and then connect power again, holding down the reset button for another 5 seconds. This gives me rapid blinking leds but they keep blinking forever. The router doesn't seem to reset and all I can do is upower and power it again.
I don't know if pinging is blocked by default but even trying to reach the router through http via IE5 with 192.168.123.254 doesn't connect me.
What am I doing wrong?

 

[deran]

Sound like the default ip 192.168.123.254 is not correct for the router. Try to use DHCP on the XP and type ipconfig /all at the command prompt. You can find the ip for the gateway. Then try connect to the router with that ip.

 

[Dries]

Hi Deran, thanks for your reply.

However, the DHCP service seems to fail to give me a proper Gateway address. (And I think the subnet mask it returns is strange as well)

Here is the output of ipconfig /all:

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : latem
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : 3Com EtherLink III ISAPNP Ethernet Adapter (Generic 3C509b)
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-10-4B-35-16-B7
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration IP Address. . . : 169.254.164.224
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :


What could this be?

 

[deran]

Sound like your PC not see the network. When XP not see the network or the DHCP server then it will auto assign this range of ip address 169.254.X.X

What kind of cable (RJ45) are you use? Because router/switch is usually is 100Mb but you only have 10Mb connection. Can you look at the router document and find out the default ip? You said you can ping localhost. How did you ping? Even you can ping localhost but doesn't mean that the network card is working properly. Try to uninstall the network card driver and re-install.

 

[Dries]

Well, the documents say that 192.168.123.254 IS the default ip address. But manually configuring this doesn't allow me to ping it. I was thinking my my ethernet card is a 10/100Mbit card but looking at 3com's website it might be only a 10 Mbit network card. Which should still work fine because my router is 10/100 capable. And I'm using a UTP straight cable to connect to my router. I'm sure I need a straight and not crossover because only then both leds are lit.
Could be that my ethernet driver is not up to date, but then I have connected the card succesfully with my modem directly. I will look further into this though.
I'm starting to suspect that there is something wrong with the router itself. Don't know if this is possible, but can some programmable memory be damaged? Or rather, the router doesn't allow resetting anymore because of some damage? Firmware update or something that screws it up?

Thanks.

DRie.s

 

[deran]

If you said that the network card can direct connect to the modem with no problem. Then I believe that something wrong with your router. Are you just flash the firmware? If so, I thibk you are getting the correct one.

Are you recently buy this router? Exchange the router if you can.

 

[Dries]

Well, posting to this forum was sort of my last effort to see if I wasn't going completey beserk. As I posted in another thread somewhere, I believe routers should have a validation date on the packaging from now on. I'm not sure if someone messed with the firmware, I certainly didn't, but this router has been under the hands of my toy-story like brother for a year.
So bought a new one: D-link this time. Didn't have a validation date on it either ;-) but it works like a charm for now. I think it will get more tricky when the 1 year warranty expires ;-).
Anyway, I'm finally up and running again. Thank you very much for trying to help me here deran. I am new to this forum, but I think I'll stick around.

Cheers.

DRie.s