Still Have Wireless Connection But Lost Internet

[saroman0414]

Three months ago my daughter went off to college with a new computer. I zapped her old system and successfully installed Ubuntu 9.04 from a CD. Everything worked fine including all the peripherals and the wireless internet connection. I was able to download and update applications without a hitch. Great system and so much cleaner and quicker than Win XP on the old machine. Then the system was shut down and lay idle for three months.

When I fired it up a couple of days ago, all seemed normal except I could no longer access the internet even though the wireless network icon showed four or five bars. I first discovered the problem when I tried to update though Update Manager and noticed that 22 identified files could not be fetched. Neither Firefox, Skype nor Goodgle Earth can connect.

The router is a Linksys WRT54G router that connects to the computer through a Linksys WUSB54G USB network adapter. The router serves three other non-Linux computers without a problem, including one using the same model network adapter.

I don't have much experience with Ubuntu, but this is some of the information I have been able to generate.

Active Network Connections-
Interface: 802.11 WiFi (wlan0)
Hardware Address: 00:18:39:0C:26:2B
Driver: rt2500usb
Speed: 54 Mb/s
Security: WPA/WPA2
IP Address: 192.168.1.101
Broadcast Address: 198.162.1.255
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Route: 192.168.1.1
Primary DNS: 192.168.1.1

Editing Auto roman (where "roman" is the SSID)-
Connect automatically: checked
Wireless tab-
SSID: roman
Mode: Infrastructure
BSID: "blank"
MAC address: "blank"
MTU: automatic

IPv4 Settings tab-
Method: Automatic (DHCP)
Available to all users: checked

Pinging localhost affords an endless series of increasing icmp_seq numbers, all 64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1) with an average time of 0.07 ms. I can also connect to the router (192.168.1.1) through Firefox but I can not ping external sites using their url.

This is the output of my ifconfig command:

eth0
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0c:6e:5b:b4:6e
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:19 Base address:0x9800

lo
Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:3631 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:3631 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:301751 (301.7 KB) TX bytes:301751 (301.7 KB)

wlan0
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:18:39:0c:26:2b
inet addr:192.168.1.101 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::218:39ff:fe0c:262b/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:11177 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:765 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:4158009 (4.1 MB) TX bytes:77488 (77.4 KB)

wmaster0
Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-18-39-0C-26-2B-36-32-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

I tried a few of the recommendations found in other sites, but nothing seems to do the job. I am perplexed because everything was great until I shut down the system for three months and then started it up again. I appreciate any assistance and would be happy to provide additional information as requested.

[windowsblows]

I have the same router and every once and awhile the modem will need to be turned off for about 5- 10 seconds and restarted then my computer will connect. The connection bars is because your wifi is working and connecting to the router but the information from the modem is not getting through the router to your computer. If you have already tried to reboot the modem then I am not sure what the problem could be other than a conflict with the other computers that are connected at the same time that your trying to get your ubuntu machine connected. You could assign yourself an ip for all your computers.

Wish I could give you more concrete advice but right now I am not at my computer to send you links on how to do this. I have had this happen to my computer even when the wife could get on the net with her. I just rebooted both the router and modem and it worked fine.

[saroman0414]

Thanks for the timely reply.

I tried rebooting the modem and I tried resetting the router with no success. However, I think I just solved the problem by completely disconnecting and reconnecting both the modem and the router and then reinstalling the router using the setup CD that came with it. I had to re-enter all the settings and the security key and now the connection seems to be working on all the computers. I am presently upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 and it seems to be proceeding without any problems. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Thanks again.

[windowsblows]

Just remember you might have to reboot once in awhile I have the same router and it will hang once in awhile and good luck with 9.10. I had to do some tweaks with mine to get the internet to work faster. Mozilla in 9.10 was really slow for me had something to do with the ipv6. Glad I could help!