WRT54G - LAN fine, router to Internet fine, but can't route LAN to Internet?

Question

Weird problem yesterday.

All of a sudden, no computers in house can connect to the Internet through our WRT54G (probably 8-10 years old w/ last stock firmware) - wired or wireless. I notice the little symbol on our Win7 machines on the network icon in sys tray. They all DID have connectivity to the router though. No changes made to either the router or the computers - in fact we had been out of the house for the past hour.

Everything worked find on the LAN side - I could run my music servers, etc.

I could log into the WRT54G and execute pings agains www.yahoo.com for example with no problems. But, still no connectivity from LAN PCs to the Internet.

Connected home PC directly to cable modem, no problem, verified not a problem with cable company.

Tried to power reset the WRT54G and cable modem several times. No change.

Hard reset the WRT54G by holding down the reset button in the back to get to factor defaults. Wired connected PC starts working again (wireless PCs had been turned off anyway). Loaded back in my saved configuration (nothing funky, just had a changed SSID and a few other minor wireless config). Problem returns. Repeated several times of factory (fine), previously working config (bad). Consistent.

I finally just went and got a spare wireless router I had in a closet. In fact, it is also a WRT54G, but slightly older and had been loaded with Tomato because I was using it briefly as a bridge. I reconfigured it to be an access point with identical settings to the old stock WRT54G, and everything was back to being fine. No changes to any of the PCs - all I did was swap the routers (albeit the routers were a bit different).

So, I have the "problem" WRT54G sitting here, and I'm wondering if it is just plain dead or what. Again, LAN side had worked fine, and from the WRT54G out to the cable company worked fine. It just couldn't route anything on the LAN to the Internet, at least not with my previously working config. What continues to boggle my mind is that if I reset it to factory default, it worked (at least in wired mode).

I don't believe I have any problem computers, they all act and scan clean for malware, etc. And I believe I had them all powered off during most of the testing. And the swapped router works fine with all of them, and vice versa.

And the problem affected both wired and wireless, which was odd.

Has anyone seen anything like this happen before?

Did I miss some fix or troubleshooting step?

Any explanation for why it would work in factory default mode, but would not after I reloaded the previously working config?

Is it possible that some area of memory or something is just toasted after all these years, and changing the config causes it to be accessed?

If anyone has experienced this problem, did you try loading new firmware (stock or alternate) with any luck in fixing the router?

Very curious! Any help is very welcome!!!

-mike

Answer 1

this would appear like an obvious answer, yet because you said utilising DHCP, verify your community settings to make certain you're not any more getting a static IP quite of having the computer fetch an IP presented by the router's DHCP server. commence > Settings > administration Panel less than community connections, acceptable click on your instantaneous adapter and click on homes on the bottom. contained in the record contained in the recent window, choose TCP/IP and click homes. ascertain both between the options are set to their first thoughts. Have it "get carry of an IP deal with immediately" and also "get carry of DSN server deal with immediately". If the project remains there it would want to aspect out a topic with the router's DHCP server. yet when you consider that your different computer would not seem to have any project connecting to the internet I doubt that it is an project with the way the router is configured...

Answer 2

I have that exact same router and I'm thinking of replacing it simply b/c I'm beginning to have issues with it that are simply not explainable.



You did all the proper troubleshooting. Once you "blow up" the configurations and reset it back to default the only other thing I would recommend is updating to the latest firmware and then give it a go..if it's still acting up...scrap it.



You just never know with that version router. I bet if we swap them out mine would work on your lan and yours would work fine on mine....they are just that sensitive.

Answer 3

Have you tried updating drivers? Try doing a complete uninstall the reinstalling. It's also possible that the router has gone bad.

Answer 4

Could be anything but given the age of the router it's probably just worn out.