Initial Setup — get DHCP lease for pcWRT, but no internet

[kmortelite]

Hi. I have a pcWRT Toronto-AC, and am unable to get it to work. Electrically, the lights come on when I connect the wrt’s LAN port to the main ethernet router’s LAN port and it is recognized as a gig ether port. On the main router, I can see the device name that I set in pcwrt’s admin panel, and I can see a DHCP addess is handed out, but internet doesn’t work. The pcWRT is never able to talk out to the internet.

I tried cloning a MAC address of a machine on the main router that definitely has internet, and this didn’t work. Yes, I disconnected the machine who’s MAC address I cloned. Not sure what’s up.

I thought maybe it needs a firmware update, but can’t find where to download a firmware update for application via USB (because I can’t get connected to the network).

Any help at all is appreciated. I’m technically competent, I think. 🙂 Just never set up a pcWRT before, and am running into issues.

Thanks!

Karl

[support]

@kmortelite You need to connect the pcWRT WAN port to a LAN port on your main router.

[kmortelite]

Oh my. I did type LAN twice. Oops.I meant to type WAN for the first one. I did exactly as you say, not what my first post says.

What else shall I try?

Thanks!

[support]

What is the IP address displayed under the Internet section in the Status page (on the pcWRT router)?

[kmortelite]

Okay, here’s an update:

I was trying to get this to work at someone else’s house, and it didn’t. When I got back into town, I tried it at my house and hooked it up the exact same way, and it worked. The only thing I can think of is their ISP was MAC address filtering, not letting another router on the network. (Rise Broadband has been known to do that.) In any case, it works as-is at my house. I’m going to update the firmware here and try it at their house next time I go there.

The only hole in my theory is I did try to clone a MAC address of a device on the network, but, while I was doing it, I had that same device hooked up to the LAN side as well… so that may have messed with the layer 2 stuff. Not sure.

I’ll reply if I ever get this going, but it will be a long time before I am able to travel back to their house.

Thanks for the help!

[Author]

Posts