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I used the laptop in bed this morning, as per.

Then brought it downstairs, and it lost its connection. It took me half an hour to get it going again, using various tricks I've had to learn, including restarting the home hub, which is only 5 feet away from the laptop.

today the problem was "invalid IP address"

Anyone know why it loses its connection just by coming down the stairs?

It does this intermittently. It used to be every day, and now it's once in a while.

very irritating though.

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A few questions TS:

You say Home Hub, does that mean you're with BT?

Does you laptop have wireless built in or are you using a card or dongle?

What operating system are you using on your laptop?

Do you know if your laptop has a fixed IP address, or is it assigned by your Home Hub?

Do you know if your neighbours have wireless networks?

Is your Home Hub near any electrical equipment, such as a fridge?

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There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I had a similar problem and it turned out to be the channel I was using. A neighbour was using the same channel and they were interfering.

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Thanks for answering. Yes, BT

built in

Windows XP

fixed (we had laptop way before the Home Hub

next door, dunno, but there are about 3 wirelesses that show up on my laptop

no, nothing except phone chargers plugged in under the table

__________________
~ "I would rather do a good hours work weeding than write two pages of my best; nothing is so interesting as weeding" ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I promise not to mention the rather excellent Search function again. Feel free to slap me if I do

Could be Ollie was on the right track. If 3 wireless networks show up on your laptop does it show what channels they are on? Wireless channels overlap and can cause interference. Best choice is whichever of 1, 7 or 13 isn't being used by your neighbours. This willl require making a change on your Home Hub, but your laptop (and any other devices) should find the new channel without you having to tell it.

__________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

This site has a video on changing the channel on a BT Home Hub:

How do I change the wireless channel on my BT Home Hub? | Help | BT.com

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Current Executive Board Members at Ollietopia Inc:
Snadger - Director of Poetry
RedThorn - Chief Interrobang Officer
Pumpkin Becki - Head of Dremel Multi-Tool Sales & Marketing and Management Support
Jeanied - Olliecentric Eulogy Minister
piskieinboots - Ambassador of 2-word Media Reviews

Also, make sure nothing else is trying to use the same IP address, printer or desktop, etc.

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Caro

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day

Are you a 100% certain that you are on a fixed IP address, just because your laptop was there before the home hub doesn't mean that your IP address is fixed..
If it was happening to mean with that error I would go into a DOS prompt and type ipconfig /all then press Enter(dont forget the space before the /) I would search the output for the above command for these lines.

Dhcp enabled this will be yes or no, if yes then your IP addresss isnt fixed
IP Address (most likely starts with) 192.168.x.x
Subnet mask most likely 255.255.255.0 (if the above starts with 192)
Default Gateway most likely 192.168.x.x

If the IP address starts with 169 (an APIPA address) then this means that the adaptor most likely hasn't got a fixed IP address but it cannot contact a valid DHCP device to obtain an IP address.
Depending on the output from ipconfig /all I may then type
ipconfig /release press enter
then ipconfig /flushdns press enter
then ipconfig /renew press Enter, within about 30 seconds of pressing enter you should get an IP address and a subnet mask being displayed if your adaptor can contact a DHCP device.

If all the above didnt work I then usually swear a bit > kick the dog and then remove the power from the router for 5 minutes

Genius guys, thank you.

I don't know if it's worked yet, but I've changed from channel 1 to 11.

I didn't know about wireless interference, or channels, or that I could put my hub into low-power at night.

Gawd bless this Grapevine

__________________
~ "I would rather do a good hours work weeding than write two pages of my best; nothing is so interesting as weeding" ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I promise not to mention the rather excellent Search function again. Feel free to slap me if I do

TEB: sorry, but you lost me at "are you 100%"

I just don't understand tech-talk

__________________
~ "I would rather do a good hours work weeding than write two pages of my best; nothing is so interesting as weeding" ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I promise not to mention the rather excellent Search function again. Feel free to slap me if I do

Not sure I understand this bit, but.. we used to use AOL, and I believe it assigns an IP each time you sign on, whereas other providers, you get one first time and that is yours henceforth, but it may be some other code name for the particular thing I am thinking about..

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Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.

It depends on the how the software is written, in a windows server network an IP address is leased to a computer for 8 days, after the lease expires the device asks for another IP address and it is renewed and usually the computer will get the same IP, other devices do this differently, with the routers/wap devices that I have used I find they expire the IP address in a shorter period. In the early days of broadband (in the UK at least) most peeps were on a dynamic IP address, i.e. it would or could change every time you reconnected but a lot of ISP now allocate a static IP to a ADSL connection.

Every device attached to the internet has to have an IP address. IP stands for "Internet Protocol".

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) assigns you an IP address when you connect to the Internet. Generally, unless you pay a bit extra you are not guaranteed to always have the same IP address each time you connect, although in practice with broadband you may find your IP address rarely changes.

Most households using broadband will have one ISP and therfore one IP address.

If you just have the one computer connected via your modem to the Internet then that computer will use the IP address assigned.

A lot of households these days have multiple devices connected to the Internet, but as far as your ISP is concerned you are still assigned one IP address. That IP address is used by your Router or Home Hub and that is the only device that your ISP's network talks to. Generally, your Router is responsible for assigning IP addresses to each of the devices in your household, in this case the IP addresses on your home network are referred to as dynamic. However, there is a way that you can over-ride this and assign specific IP addresses to specific devices, these are referred to as static.

__________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Anyway, we suspect that the original problem was that the computer was connecting via the wrong hub at times?

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Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.

There is an excellent application called Network Stumbler which shows all wireless hubs in range and which channels they are using. I run this periodically just to make sure that my own wireless router channel is well away from any neighbouring routers. Network Stumbler is free and can be found at Downloads | NetStumbler.com.

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Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it.

No, it is unlikely that it was trying to connect to the wrong hub as most people are sensible enough to use encryption on their wireless networks these days and therefore the laptop couldn't connect to a wireless network it didn't have the encryption key for. It's just that we have 13 channels within a fairly narrow band and they can interfere with each other. So if you and your neighbour are both using the same channel or ones close to each other you can get interference. The best channel to use is whichever of 1, 7 or 13 is furthest away from the other networks close by you.

@Gwyndy, yes, Network Stumbler's good isn't it. Another good one is WiFiFoFum.

__________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I'm pretty sure my neighbours don't use encryption. When I start off my laptop, it picks up a signal, and our home router is NOT wireless type, so it MUST be coming from next door (or somewhere like that) mustn't it?
Why would it be important to encrypt the signal?

__________________
Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.

So that someone else doesn't use the signal that you are paying for. If you're happy to share, then don't encrypt

__________________
~ "I would rather do a good hours work weeding than write two pages of my best; nothing is so interesting as weeding" ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I promise not to mention the rather excellent Search function again. Feel free to slap me if I do

Encrypt!!!!

If you dont somebody can get access to your network and your personal details

We have kept with the cable option. When I've picked up a wireless signal, I've never seen any sign of any information, but then when it comes to computers, I'm like the driver who just about knows to keep the fuel tank filled and get the car serviced regularly!

__________________
Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.

Most WAP's come with a pre-defined SSID and the WAP device is set to broadcast this SSID to allow other devices to connect to it, if you are within range then you could well see yours neighbours SSID as an available network, this doesn't mean that you can connect to it though - its just available, the presence of a SSID doesn't necessarily mean that the device isn't employing any security either.

As mentioned, if a WAP device isn't employing a encrypted connection it would allow someone within the WAP range to connect to the device and the internal network

So if you're feeling altruistic and don't mind anyone using something you are paying for and potentiallly downloading God knows what using your connection and intercepting your e-mail traffic and having a good root around everything you've got stored on your hard disks then don't bother encrypting

__________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I successfully connect to the same network as on my desktop. Presumably that means he hasn't got anything to stop me?

__________________
Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.

Since the connection in this house IS NOT WIRELESS, presumably this is irrelevant?
Presumably one has to know HOW in order to connect to the information stored on a computer that 'owns' the connection you have picked up?
We have 2 computers on a wired router (no wireless capability) and only SHARED files on each are accessible to the other computer, presumably with sufficient knowledge one could get past this? (main reason, apart from the simultaneous use of broadband, is to share printer)

__________________
Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.

If you can connect to your neighbours wireless connection without entering a password to that connection then it isn't employing any security and you could in theory start browsing the internet and his network, off course attempting to could well be illegal

If you have any computer connecting to the Internet using whatever method then your network is vulnerable.

Yes, you are right, the encryption of wireless networks is irrelevant to you if you don't have a wireless network.

__________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

So are you saying you have connected your laptop wirelessly to the internet using your neighbours Access Point? If so, then technically that's theft.

__________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Well since we haven't got a wireless connection, and the laptop connected, that is the only explanation I have, but there was no actual intent, and there has never been any actual 'use', just getting as far as seeing that there was e-mail, so I went back to the desktop, (because if I want to save e-mail that is where I want it).

__________________
Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.