Re: Cannot communicate with Primary DNS Server(192.168.254.254)

On 9/17/2010 9:38 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:02:48 -0700, "Bobster"<(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>> I've just returned home from a 3 month absence and cannot get internet
>> access through my Linksys WRT54GS router from my wireless laptop. I have
>> three computers hard wired to the router with good internet access. The
>> laptop connects to the router with no problem but once connected, I can see
>> my home network but cannot get access to the internet.
>>
>> I've reset the router and tried allowing the laptop (Windows Vista) to fix
>> the interconnection the following message: "Cannot communicate with Primary
>> DNS Server(192.168.254.254)". Resetting the network adapter does not fix
>> the problem. If I connect the laptop to the router with a network cable,
>> everything works fine.
>>
>> Finally, before I left in June, I had wired in an access point using a
>> second WRT54GS router configured as an access point. For the moment, I've
>> disconnected the access point from the network.
>
> Can you ping the router? Presumably, it's also at 192.168.254.254.
> If ping fails, check your encryption (WEP/WPA/WPA2) settings on the
> laptop and make sure you're actually connected. Check the worthless
> Vista Network and Swearing Center and make sure that it looks
> something like this:
> <http://www.home-network-help.com/images/vista-network-and-sharing-center.jpg>
> Notice the (hidden) wireless connection status and signal strength.
>
> That's a rather odd DNS server IP. If your router is at the default
> of 192.168.1.1, then something or someone has configured a static IP
> for the DNS server, and probably for the IP address on the laptop.
> Probably someone being "helpful". Check the IP address and DNS
> address settings for the wireless interface and make sure they're set
> to obtain their values using DHCP.

Thats the standard LAN configuration (192.168.254.0/24 - .254 GW/DNS
proxy address) at least two DSL providers on the right coast use for the
combo modem-routers they provide.



>
> Many laptops have a slide switch to enable and disable the wireless.
> Check if it's on.
>
> A common problem is that the laptop thinks it's still wherever you
> used it last. With Vista, run:
> Right click on the MSDOS window and select "run as Administrator"
> ipconfig /release
> wait about 10 seconds.
> ipconfig /renew
> ipconfig /all (to see what happened. check the DNS servers)
>
> If you were at a hotel that uses a proxy server, make sure that you
> don't have a proxy server configured.
>
> In Firefox, it's
> Tools -> Options -> Network -> Settings
> Select "no proxy".
>
> In Internet Exploder, it's
> Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN settings
> Uncheck everything.
>
>

On 9/18/2010 7:30 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Sep 2010 14:28:58 -0400, George<(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>>> That's a rather odd DNS server IP. If your router is at the default
>>> of 192.168.1.1, then something or someone has configured a static IP
>>> for the DNS server, and probably for the IP address on the laptop.
>>> Probably someone being "helpful". Check the IP address and DNS
>>> address settings for the wireless interface and make sure they're set
>>> to obtain their values using DHCP.
>>
>> Thats the standard LAN configuration (192.168.254.0/24 - .254 GW/DNS
>> proxy address) at least two DSL providers on the right coast use for the
>> combo modem-routers they provide.
>
> I should hope not. The ISP controls the routeable WAN IP address
> delivered to the customers router, but usually doesn't exercise any
> control over what the customer does on the LAN side. If the ISP
> supplied management services or ran their home network remotely, maybe
> the ISP has some preferences in IP address layout. There's also a
> possibility that they're offering VPN services, which requires
> selecting the 3rd octet of the IP address (that's the first 254) to be
> unique, so that there's no IP address duplication on both sides of the
> VPN tunnel. However, from what I've seen on the left coast, the ISP
> could care less what the customer does on their side of the router.
>
> My guess(tm) is that your east coast DSL providers are using older
> Alcatel, Efficient, Speedstream, Netopia, or Siemens hardware, which
> defaults to 192.168.254.254. The current mutations of these DSL
> devices, as delivered by Motorola, use 192.168.1.254.
>
Yes, that equipment was involved. Until very very recently one of the
ISPs used to flash custom firmware. The user could only view a
minimalist version of the standard web pages that were available on the
internal web server. If you didn't like 192.168.254.0 that was too bad.

Meanwhile, at the alt.internet.wireless Job Justification Hearings, George
chose the tried and tested strategy of:

> Yes, that equipment was involved. Until very very recently one of the
> ISPs used to flash custom firmware. The user could only view a
> minimalist version of the standard web pages that were available on the
> internal web server. If you didn't like 192.168.254.0 that was too bad.

I'm using a BT Homehub 2.0B as an N access point. It's crippled so that it
will only accept an IP address that falls within 192.168.0.0/16. Anything
else results in "That is not a valid HomeHub IP address". Oh well, it was
free, can't complain too much.

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