Tips for setting up a Wi-Fi wireless router at home on the IIT Delhi campus. (by Vinay Ribeiro, myfirstname@cse.iitd.ernet.in)

You probably have already been supplied an ADSL modem by IIT which looks like a "sting-ray fish". This modem gets plugged in to the USB port of your computer at home. It only allows you to have Internet access on one computer at one location in your home. With the help of a wireless router you can get Internet access on (1) multiple computers that are (2) located anywhere in your house.

How do you setup a wireless router at home on the IIT campus? First, buy a "Wireless router (802.11g) with in-built ADSL modem". You may skip the rest of this paragraph which is only meant for geeks. You may wonder: "Why is the built-in modem required? Can I not leverage my existing sting-ray looking modem?" In theory you should be able to connect a plain wireless router (without in-built ADSL modem) to the existing ADSL modem you use at home. I tried this but ran into some technical problems. Your sting-ray modem has a USB connector through which (1) it receives power, and (2) sends data to your computer from the Internet. Unfortunately the wireless routers available in the market usually have only an RJ-45 socket for input. Connecting the USB of the sting-ray to the RJ-45 of the wireless router while satisfying both the above requirements appears to be very difficult.

Remove the connector from the "modem" output of your phone-splitter from the sting-ray and put it into the WAN socket of your wireless router with in-built ADSL modem.

Follow the instructions for setting up the wireless router that were provided with it. PLEASE CHANGE THE DEFAULT PASSWORD OF YOUR ROUTER AND ALSO SETUP WPA SECURITY.

Below are some configuration parameters that should help you set up the router. For wireless security, lookup some website such as: WPA Wireless Security for Home Networks

WAN settings

VPI/VCI: 8/35

Protocol: MAC Encapsulating Routing (MER)

Default gateway: 10.200.1.1

Subnet mask: 255.255.0.0

Primary DNS: 10.10.1.2

Secondary DNS: 10.10.2.2

IP address: . You can simply use the IP address already allocated to you. You can find out what this is by reconnecting the sting-ray modem and typing "ipconfig" in a command window (Windows machine)

LAN settings (example)

IP address: 192.168.1.1

Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

Enable DHCP

Start DHCP IP address: 192.168.1.2

End DHCP IP address: 192.168.1.254

Now your wireless router acts as a wireless access point. You can connect to it using any Wi-Fi enabled computer.