Aerothorn on 15/8/2008 at 22:37
So, long story short, my parents wanted me to set up a wireless router at their cabin. Normally I'm perfectly competent with this stuff, and this router is quite simple - plug in the connections and the software does the rest.
So (carefully following the instructions) I plugged the modem into the router, and the router into the computer. But there was no net connection and the program could not finish setting up.
So I did various troubleshooting things and found something odd: the ethernet cable that came with the router did not seem to function. Leaving the router out of the equation, if I connected the modem to the computer via the red ethernet cable we already had, everything worked fine. But using the blue cable that came with the router, it didn't worked.
So I figured we somehow had a broken ethernet cable. Went out and bought a new one - and that doesn't work either.
So what's the deal? As far as I can tell they are all indentical, standard ethernet cables - are there differing types? Why would only our old cable work? This just boggles me.
Briareos H on 15/8/2008 at 23:06
Buy an ethernet crossover cable
ChickenMcOwnage on 15/8/2008 at 23:53
When the router was physically connected to the computer, could you connect to the router via 192.168.1.1 (or whatever your router defaults to)?
Mortal Monkey on 16/8/2008 at 09:59
Like Briareos H mentioned, the blue cable is likely a (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable) crossover cable, while the other two cables are straight. You only use a crossover cable to connect two computers together (I.E. the modem* and the PC), and straight cables to connect computers and routers to routers.
*Some modems have a built-in router, in which case you don't need a crossover cable.
BEAR on 16/8/2008 at 15:57
Look at the pairs themselves, you should be able to see the colors on each wire.
If the cable thats not working is not the same on both ends, it is either messed up or a crossover. To be a strait cable the pairs have to be identical on both sides (in the end it doesn't matter what order they are in, just that they are the same on both sides).
A crossover will have the green and orange pairs switched (ie orange-white and orange switched with green-white and green).
Using the net connection as a means to diagnose a problem is a bad idea anyways, you should test other things first. Try to log into the router and check the configuration, make sure its giving out an IP address, make sure its set to the appropriate WAN settings (for a cable modem it would be DHCP but if its DSL you probably would have to put in PPPoE settings or something).
Aerothorn on 16/8/2008 at 20:10
All three cables appear to have identical ends, i.e. are not crossover cables. Which leaves me still confused as to why they don't work normally between the modem and the computer (or the modem and the router, or the router and the computer, as the case may be).
Will try interacting with the router in other ways - networking is not my forte. Thanks for the advice.
CaptSyn on 23/8/2008 at 14:49
Crossover cables aren't needed at all these days unless you are directly connecting 2 computers to each other, without a router or hub. Not even ICS requires a crossover cable.
This is because most networking hardware these days can automatically compensate for either cable type and work just fine with either.
And don't ever go by the outside color of the cable to determine what you have. There are supposed to be industry standards but it's rarely followed.
Take your cables to Best Buy and have the geek squad morons test them. And don't let them charge you an arm and a leg either. Be very wary of the geek squad, they don't require any sort of computer education to get the job.
Better yet, go to a local pc shop and see if they will test them. Take your router as well so they can check it out.
