Huawei MT841 and D-Link Wireless Router - WiFi & LAN @ home !!

Ok Folks, I'm back again. This post is a sequel to my earlier one. Network buffs, please excuse if you think this is waste of time. But I just wanted to put it out there for benefit of those who want to know how !.

Like I mentioned in my earlier blog, I have a BSNL broadband connection at home. Modem - Type 3(Huawei MT841) on which I setup LAN. But what I also wanted was a Wireless LAN. Sadly the Type 3 doesn't have PCMCIA wireless card. People at the nearest BSNL office were equally clueless and advised me to upgrade from Type3 to Type4 which, incidentally comes with a wireless card by default. However, I chose to spend Rs.1500/- more to get a D-Link wireless router over BSNL modem upgrade for a couple of reasons(contact me if you're really interested to know). Let's get to the point now -

My requirements pretty much remained the same, with just one addition i.e. turn my home into a WiFi hotspot.

1. So I started with D-Link Wireless Router, which -

a. ofcourse is good for WiFi setup
b. and has 4 LAN ports. So it's good for LAN setup as well.

Besides, It comes with a default IP address i.e. 192.168.0.1, just to make life a bit more easy to configure LAN.

2. So powered on the D-Link modem. Connected the MT841 internet connection from LAN port 1 to the internet port on D-Link. One way to configure the wireless modem is to use the wizard CD given with the modem. But, for some weird reason, I kept getting an error message that said that multiple network adapters were active. Only one needs to be active. I couldn't get rid of it, so I tried accessing the device from the browser directly using the URL -

http://192.168.0.1

However, since I had configured my PC to work in MT841 LAN, I had setup it's IP address to 192.168.1.3 - which would never allow me detect D-Link router. So, I changed TCP/IP network settings to obtain IP and DNS server addresses automatically. With that, I was able to get to the above URL.

3. The home page of D-Link URL has many menus- one for setup, advanced settings, status...etc.
Click on setup. On the left side, you'll see menu items to setup LAN, Wireless Network. Click on LAN. The resulting page will give you options to setup internet
a. using wizard
b. manually
I went for the latter(manual). All I had to do was specify that IP address be automatically assigned. Ofcourse then, configure the DHCP to assign IP address to my home PC which is 192.168.0.100. Well, you could add 3 more PCs/Laptops via DHCP settings. Actually, you could scale it out to 25 hosts, if only you had a 24 port LAN switch...probably I'll do that as well, someday.

So, that took care of the LAN. Now it's WiFi turn - pretty simple stuff actually. Again, click on setup, Wireless connection.

1. Setup the SSID - Any favorite name to identify your WiFi network
2. Secure your network - There're a bunch of options available viz WEP, WPA, WPA2. I chose WPA & WPA2. Configured the same network key on my laptop's wireless client adapter and viola....my home WiFi hotspot is all set. 25 more hosts can access it, securely, but I don't guarantee the same speed ;-).

Not sure, if my blog has all the details you're looking for. But it would atleast, get you started in the right direction. So, until next time, take care....happy surfing.

~M