New to this problem and group. If a more appropriate NG please advise.
First off, I'm not network literate, so after a good laugh at my attempts to fix; hope someone here might have a good idea to try.
Daughter has a Dell laptop and is away at college. Moved at semester break, and can't get it to connect at new house.
She was connected at home via a Linksys wireless cable switch/outer and wireless card. Worked fine. tcp/ip set to assign address automatically worked great
Moved to dorm last fall, hooked into the uinversity system's ethernet connection first try.
Moved into sorority house at break, can't connect no matter what we try. 40 kids living there. Have turned off firewall, tried bridging, let it attempt new connection on it's own, absolutely no go. Box is WXP Home SP2 installed.
Ran ipcong /all and it is giving me the ISP's class A address , 24.220.x.82, so figure it must be maybe a hub off the cable modem? The hardware is locked up in the housemother's room, and couldn't see what was there. Called the ISP, and they said over 50% packet loss, so must be the house's hardware being split too many times, bad modem, who knows. Funny thing is; her suitemate can pull an IP when we take the lan cable off daughter's and plug into hers. Was expecting to see 192.162.x.x, but the other address threw me. Was tempted to just assign a static address of 24.220.x.250 but figured it might knock someone elsewhere out, and the ISP wouldn't give a go to try it.
Really don't want to pay for any hardware or a service call since the ISP assures me it's not my kid's computer with troubles, and don't want to create any ill will for my daughter with the head honchos at the house, but she has no internet access, and need to resolve this.
Any helpful ideas appreciated. Thank you. Mark