Wireless MSN Trouble Belkin f5d76324 (v5)

[thebigsam]

Hey,

I have recently converted my wired network to a wireless network, and bought a Belkin f5d76324 ADSL Modem and Router.

My macbook connects fine and I can use the internet and verious other net related programs such as skye, yahoo, vent, and so on however the one, and almost most important, program i cannot use is msn (ive tried using amsn, mercury and another IM program, all with no joy).

When I attempt to sign into msn it tells me that im either not online, or the server is down.

However the other (windows) computers on my network have no problem getting onto msn. Ive tried various solutions, port forwarding, reseting the router etc etc, but nothing.

I no that its not the software as when I revert back to my old wired system everything works fine.

Ive also spent days trawling the net and there seems to be a score of people that have the same problem, yet no answers! So I'm hoping someone can help.

Here is my router set up - my isp is Orange (well free serve before it got bought out)

Version Info
Firmware Version 5.00.12 (Annex A)
Boot Version 6.01.04.00
Hardware v5
Serial No. 200730D7500086



LAN Settings
LAN/WLAN MAC 00:11:50:f9:00:ac/
00:11:50:f9:00:ac
IP address 192.168.2.1
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
DHCP Server Enabled
DHCP Clients num 138


Internet Settings
ADSL Status Connected
Data Rate Down/Up 6976Kb/448Kb
WAN MAC address 00:11:50:f9:00:ad
Connection Type PPPoA
Subnet mask 255.255.255.255
Wan IP 84.69.227.126
Default gateway 62.25.196.202
DNS Address 195.92.195.94

Features
UPnP Enabled
NAT Enabled
Firewall Enabled
Wireless Enabled
Mode Mixed (11b+11g)
ESSID Broadcast Enabled
SSID onekingsholme
Channel 11
Security Enabled


Any help would be great

thanks
Sam

[mvcube]

Have you tried to disable the firewall? (NAT needs to be enabled of course!) I don't know which ports are used by MSN. They have to be enabled in the firewall to get connected.

Does MSN work, if you use the wireless rout over an ethernet cable? (It should have an internal hub or at least a single ethernet port.)

[thebigsam]

The firewall was also my first though, so i disabled it, with no avail. Ive also opened the ports to let msn work, but again nothing. (It might just be a case of crap router software).

At the moment i have Audim running via HTTP, which is slow, and drops connection often. But its better than nothing.

Ive also enabled NAT. However some of my torrent programs suggest that I may have a NAT problem? But I'm unsure of how to manually config NAT (as in I don't know what it is, or does so I thought I best not dabble)? So I've just left it alone.

I'm not sure if it works when I plug a eth into my router, as I have since damaged my eth cable and it no longer works. But it should do as all windows pcs on my network work fine (wired and unwired).

[mvcube]

You WILL need NAT because it maps your local IP adresses to the Internet IP you get from the provider. So don't touch it!

Since I don't have MSN, I can't help much further. Is it probably a matter of the MSN client software version? Have you tried the Windows app under Parallels or VMWare?

[thebigsam]

No? Were can i get these packages?

I take it this is much like Wine for Linux?

[mvcube]

Parallels and VMWare are competing commercial products that emulate a complete PC inside your Intel powered Mac. You can (and need to) install a Windows or other operating system license in the virtual machine. Done that, you can run almost any software written for the respective system on your Mac. I do it with Windows 2000, Windows XP and OS/2.

For Power Macs, look for Virtual PC which is slower because it has to emulate the CPU. But at least, it works.

[thebigsam]

I think the problem might be that although it says Ive turned the firewall off on one page, on another it still says its enabled?!