I need some Internet help!

Does anyone know how you can tell that someone knows your using their wireless?

'Cos for AGES now, i've used someone else's cos my wireless always used to do that "local only" thing and was really annoying, so my stepdad ended up getting a wire for ours and hooked it up to the downstairs pc, so its not "wireless" anymore... unless we disconnect the wire thing....

But over the last two days, the one i usually use wont connect cos it says "local only", i thought it might just be that the neighbors need to restart their modem, but sometimes i get a error message on my laptop saying "The network has detected that someone else has the same IP address in this radius blah blah"
Is this because they noticed me using it and blocked me or something?

Also, it looks like we're going to need to set up ours back to wireless, but how can i fix this Local Only thing that keeps happening? Cos the amount of times i had trouble with re connecting it to the internet after it suddenly decided it wouldn't work was ridic!

Every device on a network has what's called a MAC address. If you actually go onto your router configuration page it will state somewhere what devices are connected to the router. (In my case with an Orange Livebox it's configuration.adsl in my browser but can differ depending on the type of router). However, most people that own a router have probably never even heard of this page nevermind seen it, so unless your neighbours are particularly handy at networks I doubt they'll notice you're using it.

On there it will tell you the devices connected to the router, although it will just be a combination of numbers and letters, not exactly stating "Jennie's Laptop".

Routers also now days have whats called DHCP which gives computers, and your BB for example, an IP, just a name on their network. I think the "someone else has the same IP address" is stating you are trying to use the same address as a computer on their network already. For example if my computer was called 192.168.1.1, yours wouldn't be able to be called the same name.

Sorry if I've gone into a bit too much detail there but networks can have really stupid fiddly problems. I doubt they've blocked you but try..

Reboot your laptop.
If your on Vista/7, right click on Command Prompt and Run as Administrator, which will be under Accessories.
Type in:
"ipconfig /renew" without quotations then press enter
then type in:
"ipconfig /flushdns" press enter again, reboot the laptop, see if that changes anything.

Hope thats helped anyway, if not just post here again and I'll see if I can sort it.

It's not worked... I've found another persons internet for tonight, i'll have to try and get ours set back up to wireless on my day off!

Thanks Jed!

Damn, if you don't get it working on your day off, just post here again. No worries!

Smacking my router profusely usually does the trick.

What router/modem are you using Jen?

ChumbaWumba91 wrote:

Jed wrote: For example if my computer was called 192.168.1.1, yours wouldn't be able to be called the same name.

When I want to access my router settings I have to type that IP address into my web browser.

Yep, usually the router assigns itself as the first device on the network, makes sense really.

My router is also .1, whereas my laptop is .45 and computer is .114