[Kidwell28]

for my job we are trying to network 5 windows98 machines for this company. we got the router set up to the modem and to the machines. With the machines were are able to get through the router and ping websites and the modem yet we cannot get passed the modem and onto the internet. does anyone know what we may be doing wrong?

Kidwell28

[Law]

Ok..how can you not get pass the modem if you can ping websites? Did you mean you can't browse using a web browser?

Can you ping www.google.com or www.yahoo.com?

[Kidwell28]

ya...i can ping the websites i just can't browse them

[Law]

You have any firewall running?

Check your web browser, if you're using IE, check the internet option>connection>lan setting. If your web browser is set to connect to a proxy server, that might be the problem.

A firewall running could also be the problem. This sounds a lot like an application layer, because you can ping but can't browse.

BTW, what's the brand and model of the router and modem?

[Kidwell28]

ok... i'll check it out when i get a chance to go back down there... i just wanted to get some other ideas on what to check. thanks for the help hopefully it works

kidwell28

Edit: It is a linksys 802.11g wireless/cabled broadband router

[Law]

Yea that's the brand but what's the model of the router and DSL modem :classic:

Does this happen to all computer connected to the router? If so, you might want to have 1 computer bypass the router, this mean connecting one compute to the DSL modem to test the connection, just to see if it's the router's fault.

[Kidwell28]

i dont remember the model off the top of my head... but i'll have to try bypassing it... well... when we reset the modem it always took 5 to 10 mins to get an internet connection... the ethernet and dsl lights would come on but the internet light took a while... could this be a sign of a modem problem?

[Law]

I don't know for sure, it could just be the way the hardware interact but it shouldn't take that long for it to initiate itself and the connection. Sometime a bad DSL line can cause this, just like in a cable Internet connection when attenuation occurs or a measure of power loss as the signal travels the length of a network cable. Attenuation and mutual capacitance combined have the greatest effect on signal quality.

But that wouldn't be much of a problem if you can get a ping reply, sounds a lot like the router then your computers or DSL line.

[Kidwell28]

would it be the router if the computers can also see any shared files on the network?... i'm so confused on this

[Law]

It's not that the router is broken, you have to remember that home base routers are just basic router with four or more switch ports build into it. So your LAN may appear to be working, file sharing is working..because the packets never leaves to the default gateway where it is handle by the routing feature of the router. The only time data leaves the network is to another network like the Internet, so the packets go through the default gateway where the router determine where to route it to which interface. This usually indicates to me, that some feature on the router may be enable like Stateful Packet Inspection and other firewall features that can interfere with the communication process.

It seems like you have connectivity on the lower layers when you can ping the websites. So your connection seems fine, but not at the application layer. Possibly a firewall or proxy issue either on the computers or the router. But I'm leaning more towards the router. So your best bet is to find out by connecting a computer directly to the modem.