Last night we had two users who had problems with their wireless connection. Basically, the laptop would show a strong signal and a positive connection, the software determining the connection was shut off, firewalls were open, the systems were getting an IP address, they were able to ping out, but they were not able to route to any web addresses (including internal web addresses like http://www.washington.edu). So, I would repair the connection, clear out cookies, try a different browser, and finally, I assigned a different, static, IP address to the laptop from another laptop that had a confirmed good connection: et Viola! the machine connected just fine. And when I assigned the known bad IP address to the other laptop: et Viola! no connection.
So, I called the Network Operations Center in Seattle. And after about an hour on the phone we got one of the connections working by making an exception in the router for that IP address. I suspect a bad router at this point and have an email in to C&C to have them take a look at the problem.
For now, it looks like the wireless problems are random and rare but if you find a patron who says “I connected to the wireless network yesterday with my laptop but today it won’t let me, even though it says I’m conncetd” give me a call, I want to take a look at their computer.
I’ll do my best to keep you all up to date on any developments.
Cheers.
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