Help! SSID connecting, no IP address

I'm working in a small medical office of 5 computers, 3 desktops, 2
laptops. The laptops connect to the network via wireless which has an
extremely tempermental connection. The wireless application
connectors, Windows, Intel and McAfee are all showing a successful
connection to the Avaya (sorry no model number at this time) access
point, but they are stubbornly giving me a connection error when they
try to get an IP address and give me a 169. number. Now I can give
them static IP's and they'll see the network and do everything just
fine, that will work fine at the office, but since they are laptops the
do want to take them to other wireless points at home and around town
to work as well. I've never worked with Avaya access points before,
and from what I can tell everything is working, when I go to the built
in maintenance page I can see a list of all of the connected
workstations and get the IP addresses from them, I can ping the access
point from the laptops when I static IP them, it says it connects to
the wireless network when I DHCP them, but like I said they aren't
pulling IP addresses and IPCONFIG /release & /renew keep timing out. I
am a new tech being called in on this job since the one that they have
been using has been working for a few weeks on this and other issues
and hasn't resolved any outstanding issues, so I'm not entirely sure
how the system is configured. Any suggestions on what I should look at
next? I'm thinking checking firmware updates. Thanks.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I'm working in a small medical office of 5 computers, 3 desktops, 2
> laptops. The laptops connect to the network via wireless which has an
> extremely tempermental connection. The wireless application
> connectors, Windows, Intel and McAfee are all showing a successful
> connection to the Avaya (sorry no model number at this time) access
> point, but they are stubbornly giving me a connection error when they
> try to get an IP address and give me a 169. number. Now I can give
> them static IP's and they'll see the network and do everything just
> fine, that will work fine at the office, but since they are laptops the
> do want to take them to other wireless points at home and around town
> to work as well. I've never worked with Avaya access points before,
> and from what I can tell everything is working, when I go to the built
> in maintenance page I can see a list of all of the connected
> workstations and get the IP addresses from them, I can ping the access
> point from the laptops when I static IP them, it says it connects to
> the wireless network when I DHCP them, but like I said they aren't
> pulling IP addresses and IPCONFIG /release & /renew keep timing out. I
> am a new tech being called in on this job since the one that they have
> been using has been working for a few weeks on this and other issues
> and hasn't resolved any outstanding issues, so I'm not entirely sure
> how the system is configured.


> Any suggestions on what I should look at
> next? I'm thinking checking firmware updates. Thanks.
>

You do a hard reset of the router? Maybe, that will correct the DHCP IP
problem with wireless machine obtaining a DHCP IP from the router.

Maybe, by installing newer firmware or the current firmware the router
is using, may fix the router's problems with DHCP. The firmware could be
sick and needs to be reinstalled/flashed.

The 169 IP means that the O/S couldn't get an IP from a DHCP server and
it timed out. The O/S assigns the 169 IP to the NIC. The 169 IP will
allow the IP to access other machines on the LAN and other machines can
access it. But the IP will not allow Internet access, because it's not
using an IP on the router, as you know.

For all you know, the router could be defective.

Duane