the last job I went out on, i stayed at a day's inn. Like so many hotels these days, they have eschewed normal wired ethernet connectios for WiFi. So I popped in my trusty WiFi card and started it up. Nice strong signal.. Got an IP address.. things are looking good. BUT.. When I type in a web address into the browser, I can't connect. It just says "Looking for ......." in the progress bar. So now it's time to use what little knowledge I've got about networking. Looked up my IP address, pinged it, worked. Pinged the gateway.. worked. Pinged the DNS server.. nothing. I'm thinking now that I've been assigned an invalid DNS server address. Is there anything I can do about that? Could anything else be the cause of this?

QUOTE(gravitar @ Aug 3 2007, 04:30 AM) [snapback]57285[/snapback]

the last job I went out on, i stayed at a day's inn. Like so many hotels these days, they have eschewed normal wired ethernet connectios for WiFi. So I popped in my trusty WiFi card and started it up. Nice strong signal.. Got an IP address.. things are looking good. BUT.. When I type in a web address into the browser, I can't connect. It just says "Looking for ......." in the progress bar. So now it's time to use what little knowledge I've got about networking. Looked up my IP address, pinged it, worked. Pinged the gateway.. worked. Pinged the DNS server.. nothing. I'm thinking now that I've been assigned an invalid DNS server address. Is there anything I can do about that? Could anything else be the cause of this?

There could be many reasons for that I think. A few:
Hotel server was running, but didn't have an active internet connection itself
Hotel DHCP server hasn't passed on your assigned IP to its DNS server (for whatever reason)
The DNS server has a limited IP range which can connect to it and you needed to set an IP within this range manually.

Could very well be that if you used IP's instead of URL adresses it all worked ok. For instance if you typed 216.22.25.175 you would have landed at the main page of MrPLC. You can look up IP adresses of URL adresses at www.dnsstuff.com. Only problem is how can you acess this site with its URL when you are not connected to a DNS... so best is to bookmark 74.53.59.165 to get on this site...

Most hotels have some kind of procedure to connect to its wireless network, did you ask at the frontdesk ?

Don't forget the Gateway is just that {a gate not an open door} and in many cases especially hotels it is also the firewall.

Quite likely you need to enter a custom web address http://WelcomeToOurHotel/ is not a real address for example which will actually load a page from the gateway which asks for your room number and password you got from the front desk. iit then registers your pc with the firewall./gateway and away you go.

I'd definitely call the front desk.

I would expect if that was the case it would have redirected to this page whatever the adress is you enter in your browser.

I've seen it both ways in my 2 years on the road. Some automatically redirect to be of service and some force you to enter an address soo that "sniffers and squatters" can't hijack the signal and get redirected.

You might try entering a know IP Address of a site such as MrPLC into your browser next time. If it works then there is a DNS problem. If not your problem lies elsewhere

Entering IP address is a start. Better yet, add address to the host file. This is a simple text file that one can edit with notepad or some other simple text editor.

It is a good thing I was reminded. I have a new laptop.
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

I did a search for host DNS on google. If you find better links then post them here.

Good Topic.

Good Stuff as usual Peter -- thanks

Sometimes I just can't get a good signal from the hotel network.

There are many hotels around :)

Look at this. One reason I have a seperate wireless USB key.

Poor man's Wifi

LOL WiFry and Woktenna

Hey!

On a boat in a marina in Venezuela we have reached about 5 Km. Targeting an hotel downtown because the marina's Wifi was so slow... :)

I was wondering about this.. If only I knew of a valid IP address for something I might be able to diagnose it further :)

Let me ask another newbie question then.. Can I count on MrPLC to ALWAYS be found at 216.22.25.175, www.dnsstuff.com to ALWAYS be found at 74.53.59.165, etc? I guess I've grown too accustomed to home ISPs that change your IP address from time to time. I guess corporate customers don't have to worry about that?




Thanks for the tip.. I just copied this hosts file to my computer.

It must be working, because I notice now that the MrPLc google banner ads don't work anymore!

Not trying to make fun of the idea; just thought the names were really funny.

5KM ? That's really impressive. Perhaps I'll have my wok as standard traveling outfit...

No, you can't count on that. Originally, before there was any DNS system, all addressing over the internet was done via /etc/hosts. When the internet grew, this quickly grew out of hand (to many hosts added, to many changing addresses because whatever). Hence the DNS system.

MrPLC and dnsstuff.com will probably not change IP addresses very often - but you can't really count on that it won't happen, ever (even for companies, they might change web hotel etc).