In my One Computer Will Talk to the Router But Other Two Computers Won’t Talk to the Router article, I wrote about a strange problem that reader James Biddle was having.
Last week’s article Followup — One Computer Will Talk to the Router But Other Two Computers Won’t Talk to the Router had several suggestions from other readers to help James solve the problem.
This week, James wrote to say that he solved it.
Last week I told you about two computers won’t work on my router or hub. I used a friend of mine’s Netgear router and bingo. All works. I gave him my DLink and hub–they work just fine.
Go figure?I’ve been into computers since the VIC 20 of the late 70′s and this was the first problem I couldn’t get resolved.
In other words, something about the particular models of router and hub that James was using — or perhaps the settings he had changed in the router — was causing the problem.
Although I didn’t think about it at the time (and it wasn’t the problem since the Dlink router and hub worked for his friend), he might have turned on MAC Address Filtering in the router.
Tech Tip
With MAC Address Filtering, you tell the router the MAC Addresses of the specific network cards to which you will allow it to connect. That blocks any communication attempt by any other network device.
Of course, if his friend had used the router’s reset button to return to factory configuration, that would have fixed the issue.
Tech Tip
Typically, a short press of the router’s reset button will make the router reboot. A longer press, on the order of 10 seconds, will reset the router and reset all the router’s customized settings to the factory defaults.
This is useful especially if you have totally messed up the settings and can’t figure out what to change to get the router working again — or if you forget the password you set for the router.
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