[bbales]

I wiped my desktop hard drive over the weekend and installed Panther. Had major troubles getting the Internet back, though curiously, my PB and the PC were still connected. Twenty-four hours later, everybody was connected -- and I don't even know what I did.

The next day, I had to restart, and everything went down. I messed with all the settings and got nowhere -- finally had to call Ameritech and now just have my desktop connected via ethernet. Router, and AEBS not connected, so only one computer has access.

Here's the setup: D-link router, with AEBS, desktop and PC all connected. Ameritech told me not to even mess with Apple's helper, but just to set "built-in ethernet." So far, nothing.

Anyone have any ideas? I need help with the settings in the "network" pane. I do not have a static IP, by the way. I was tryng to say I connected to a LAN, but apparently I should be saying I connect via built-in ethernet. Anyone know?
Thanks in advance. I'm stumped, but will play around later, in hopes of magically getting it to work again.

[John Strung]

Is your desktop connected by an ethernet cable to the router, or via an airport card to the AEBS? If the ethernet, your Network Prefs panel to "connect using built-in ethernet" and "configure using DHCP" should work.

If you use those settings, what IP address does your computer pick up?

[bbales]

It's connected via ethernet cable to the router. I don't have things set up right now (opting for "direct," just to be able to have access on at least one computer in the house!) but I think some of the time yesterday, when I was trying to get things working, it told me somehting along the lines of "you have an ethernet cable but no IP address is assigned." And I think part of the time it gave me an address of 0.0.0.0. -- but I might be wrong about that one.

Any suggestions? I'll be tinkering later on. As I said, I'm just glad to have access on one of the computers! And since I copied everything onto an external hard drive, I'm still busy trying to get all my aps back in order. Still some distinct pecularities with the way things are working.

[aaanorton]

UNPLUG the power from the modem, router and AEBS.
Wait a minute.
While waiting, check that everything is connected like this: modem to WAN (or internet) port of AEBS via ethernet cable; AEBS to router's uplink port via ethernet. If the router doesn't have an uplink port, just use port 1. And router to computer in any available e'net LAN port.
Plug the modem back in. Watch the lights and wait for them to stabilize. This means it has gotten an IP.
Now plug in the AEBS and router.
Open System Prefs > Network. Show Built-in Ethernet. Configure using DHCP. Hit Apply Now.
Go to the router's config page and disable DHCP serving. If you don't know how to do this, post back.
Now go back to Network prefs. Change Using DHCP to anything else in that list and apply it. Then change it back to Using DHCP. This should get you an IP from the AEBS.
Try a web site.

*NOTE: This is one of two ways of doing this. The AEBS and router are basically interchangeable, so you could reverse their order. In this case, you'd need to disable DHCP serving on the AEBS. Neither way is "better" than the other. It just depends on how you want to connect/config stuff. The point is that you only want one DHCP server on your LAN and it should be upstream of all other devices.

[bbales]

Thanks for the tips! I'll try later on, as re-plugging everything back in involves crawling behind the desk. Such a pain.

BUT -- There is no router configuration page -- ie. I've never had software for it. It just works. (At least, it used to!) So -- I'm posting back to you, per your suggestion.

I'm still going to try things later on. And thank you for your help. You're not also an expert on Rendezvous printing, by any chance, are you? That's the one thing I never got set up right with my 12-in PB.

[aaanorton]

Well, there definitely is a config page, if it is a router. The way these work, is you type the IP of the device into the URL field of your web browser and then log in to make settings. Diff manufacturers use diff default IPs for their devices, but try this: 192.168.0.1. Just type that in like a web site you'd visit. It should take you to the router's config page. The default log in is usually "admin" and "password" or something like that. This will be in your manual that came with the router, or on line at D-Link's support page. The other option is to reverse the two units and hope for the best. Most likely the D-Link is set to serve IPs, so you could leave it that way and disable the AEBS' DHCP serving.
I really think you should figure out the log in process for the router, though. It won't be hard and it will be the best way in the long run.

[bbales]

Thanks again. You're right -- that's the addres, or something very, very similar.

This has been a pain, but I always figure I learn something important in the end. It's not so critical as long as I have one machine up and running, but I think my family woudl really appreciate that number increasing to the usual 3.

So thank you very, very much. I'll try everything out later today.

[TheDisaster]

I trick my cat into thinking I'm going to feed him so he'll quit bugging me for attention.

[bbales]

all right, now I have unplugged everything and have a huge mess. My main question though is that you said to connect the modem to the WAN port of the AEBS. DOn't I have to connect that to the router? And you have me connecting TWO things to the AEBS, but before I just had one. SO I'm kind of confused.

I did at one point get to the router configuration page, but I disabled DCHP and everything diappeared (in terms of working).

SO I messed around with some more things. And, at the moment, for reasons VERY unclear to me, the PC is working, but my computer is not. I have the router plugged into the modem WAN port, and the AEBS and the two computers in the router ports. Any hints as to what I'm doing wrong? I think I need toi start over -- then maybe I could get the router back to its configuration point. But I'm really confused about the two things plugged into the AEBS, when I didn't have that before. Sorry for being dumb...