DHCP/Self-Assigned IP address/Airport problems -- HELP!

[intensebeet]

I have been searching everywhere for a solution to this problem all to no avail and so I was hoping that someone here would have some advice to offer. I am running an iBook 600 with OSX 10.3.9 and an airport card. Also on my home network are a laptop running XP and a desktop running windows 2000pro. All three of these machines connect wirelessly to our linksys router model BEFW11S4 which is wired to our cable modem. Also on the network is another wireless media device (Roku m1001) and an xbox which is the only device directly wired to the router.

I frequently am having trouble conecting to the internet. My signal strength will say excellent but when I open Network Preferences, it tells me that I may not be able to connect to the internet because I am using a self-assigned IP address. Another consistent problem is that when I turn on my computer it takes the IP address from another computer already on the network and knocks that computer off, my internet usually works at this point. When I am having dificulties connecting and I check my settings it usually has either a very odd IP address assigned that is not used by this network, or no IP address at all being shown. Trying to configure this manually does not seem to help.

My final question relates to DHCP; running it seems to mess with the windows PC's on the network and when we turn DHCP off in the router settings my iBook seems to have no way at all to figure out how to connect to the internet.

I use my laptop on my school's wirelesss network with no problems at all and can connect to my parent's wireless network (2 PC's) easily as well, the problem only seems to be here at home.

This problem is becoming increasingly frustrating lately and the only solution seems to be to completely reset our modem/router and/or turning off one of the computers on the network. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated at this point.

[sgould]

Have you got more than one device trying to issue IP addresses?

[cmikes]

I've been having problems with this for months and finally found the solution on the discussions.apple com forums. Based on a hint in a post there I changed the wireless security from WEP to WPA personal and entered a passphrase of more than 13 characters (that apparently is the key).

Once I reset the wireless connection on the laptop and logged in with the new password and security mode, it suddenly was able to get an IP address and connect to the internet again.

Finally.

mikes

[Satcomer]

Originally Posted by cmikes

I've been having problems with this for months and finally found the solution on the discussions.apple com forums. Based on a hint in a post there I changed the wireless security from WEP to WPA personal and entered a passphrase of more than 13 characters (that apparently is the key).

Once I reset the wireless connection on the laptop and logged in with the new password and security mode, it suddenly was able to get an IP address and connect to the internet again.

Finally.

mikes

Please share this with other people.