We had no trouble with any of our devices up until Friday, I believe it was. They've all utilized our network for quite some time (this is at home), but they've all been effectively blocked - our router password is unchanged, but none of the devices can get past the "obtaining ip address" stage. They all just sit and cycle - they can "see" our network, and of the 2 devices that are mobile, I can access other networks away from home with them. The laptop is the only device that can get on, currently. The NIS firewall, or whatever it is, issue seems to be the only logical reason why these things suddenly have been kicked off the network, right?
I've tried adding the kindle as a device to the network, but I can't see it, regardless, and I can't determine the phone's address - haven't tried looking on the wii yet.
It's a little aggravating, and tough to explain to my autistic child why he can't use the netflix on the tv...we had a full-on metldown this morning, so if someone could help us, I'd love it....
Unless you are using Windows Internet Connection Sharing, there should be no interferance from Norton.
To test, physically disconnect any computers that have Norton on them, and test your connectivity.
It sounds more like you should reboot your Modem, then reboot the router. Then try to connect.
So why, then did everything except the pc stop being able to access the network? Why not that too? I'll give it a go, but I have no other ideas at this point.
Hi grayda1802,
The Norton Firewall and Network Security Map control the network traffic into and out of your computer. Norton can allow or block access to your PC from outside devices, but cannot impose any rules on those devices concerning their connections with things other than your PC. So if those devices cannot communicate with your PC, that could be due to Norton, but if they cannot get to the internet directly through the router, that would not be due to Norton.
Update is that the issue has been resolved. I have no explanation for why the router would allow the pc and none of the other devices, but I accessed its remote system monitoring and restarted the system. So far, it seems to be ok. I'll add that I had searched the internet all weekend for hints as to the problem/solution, and this was the first place I got an answer from, so thanks to you both for your help.
Glad to be able to help.
Why the router suddenly blocked everything but your computer is going to be a mystery. It is an electronic device that can be affected by many outside issues. All electronics will need to be restarted at some time or another.
grayda1802 wrote:
Update is that the issue has been resolved. I have no explanation for why the router would allow the pc and none of the other devices, but I accessed its remote system monitoring and restarted the system. So far, it seems to be ok. I'll add that I had searched the internet all weekend for hints as to the problem/solution, and this was the first place I got an answer from, so thanks to you both for your help.
An important "part" of your router (or combined modem/router) is its DHCP server - DHCP stands for "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol". Every time a device on your network connects to the router (either by Wire or by WiFi), the router's DHCP server issues that device a unique local network address (i.e.: 192.168.1.25). That unique IP address is necessary in order to correctly route packets of communication to and from each connected device - similarly to how the postal dept uses your house address to deliver mail to your home. Part of the configuration settings for the router define various behavioral characteristics for how the DHCP is to function. For instance the starting base address number (the .25 last octet in the address example) as well as how many available addresses in total will be made available for attaching different devices. There are other settings too which control how often each device must re-request a new address (called lease time).
Many devices and routers have a kind of persistence (generally based on their hardware encoded "MAC" address) that tends to make them reacquire the same transient (or temporary) IP address when requesting an address from the DHCP. The DHCP's address "lending pool" is just that, a "lending pool", meaning that as a device leaves the network (is turned off, or whatever), then its assigned IP address becomes available to "lend out" to other devices wishing to join the network. If everything is working correctly, this process "schema" does an adequate job of keeping everybody happy.
What can go wrong with all this is that (under various conditions) the available address pool simply becomes exhausted (meaning no address to give out when requested). When that happens you will get the problem you've described. By re-booting or power-cycling the router the entire defined pool of addresses gets cleared (or reset) and becomes available again, which starts the process of "lending out" addresses to the requesting devices all over again.
Actually there's much more to all this but, I've tried to put it into fairly simple terms for purpose of explanation.
Regards,
John