I have a strange situation that doesn't make any sense. I have a fairly straight forward home network with one wired and one wireless connection through a router and cable modem to the internet. The wired connection is my home PC and the wireless is used for my work laptop. This was all installed shortly after Christmas. Everything has been working fine until my kids have come home from school. They have Apple PowerBooks and connect wirelessly. It seems that only one person/unit can use Instant Messenger at a time. I never noticed this as it was just me before and I never tried to connect from both home PC and work laptop.
They, of course, are big Instant Messenger users and want to be connected all the time. There seems to be no problem with regular Internet connectivity, just the Instant Messenger. Who ever gets on first seems to block the others. If the first person signs off then someone else can get on, but that then blocks the original user, etc. They have different screen names and none of the PC's are set up for connection sharing, so I'm dumbfounded as to what is going on. Has anyone experienced this sort of thing and can help with some advise.