After years of decent service, my Linksys WRT54G wireless router started acting up after getting WildBlue satellite Internet service. Before that, I’d had Comcast cable and Qwest DSL at various times all without trouble. After many years, was it just my router’s time to go? That’s what I figured, and after investing hours and hours working on the hobbling WRT54G over the last several months it was time to move on. Being an ex-computer programmer, it’s very hard to put down a tech problem without solving it, but this time I exercised my discipline to enjoy the freedom of not needing to understand or fix this router problem. So I took it outside and ended its misery (really mine).
After surfing around for a good replacement router, I picked up a Linksys WRT54GS2 just to show “no hard feelings” for my old nagging Linksys router. Got it home and began to set it up. The LAN worked fine, but couldn’t get outside to the Internet. So I disconnected the cable and hooked a laptop directly to the WildBlue satellite modem…boom, Internet was fine. Connected the computer back up to the router and…no Internet! After doing this nonsense for a couple hours, decided to surf around and see if anyone else was having similar troubles with my combination of equipment. Not surprisingly, yes, others were. On the forum WildBlue Uncensored, I found this article about the WRT54GS2:
http://www.wildblue.cc/wbforums/showthread.php?p=74980
The guy had the same problem with the WRT54GS2, bought a bunch of new routers and decided to try them one at a time. The first one was up and running in under 15 minutes! It happened to be the Netgear WGR 614v9. Although it was getting late, the IT guy in me couldn’t wait so I drove to Wal-Mart to fix this irritating, multi-month-long problem. Story short, the Netgear WGR 614v9 was up in no time. No sweat, no tears.
Is this a WildBlue problem? Apparently, some tech geeks are seeing a lot of problems with the new Cisco Linksys wireless routers. So maybe WildBlue is innocent. Whatever the case, for what it’s worth I hope at least a couple people stumble upon this blog and are saved some hours of life to do something more fun and interesting.
I had a the same problem with a linksys wrt54gs2 v1. My father has wildblue and the router would not work. I installed a 3rd party firmware (dd-wrt) and router workes fine! I just wanted to post this so it might help other people..
Thanks for adding that…
Not sure if this is the same problem or not but….. I also have a wrt54gs2 v1 router. Wild Blue (WB) came out and installed the dish. Had the internet up on my computer. Worked fine. They installer told me they don’t deal with routers but that I should just be able to plug it back in and it would work just as it did with Hughes previously. Well it didn’t. When I run the trouble shooter, it says it can’t detect the proxy setting and the internet page is not available. But in the lower right hand part of the screen the network icon says I have internet. Anyway, WB tells me I have an internet connection even though I can’t get anything to come up on a web page. So I’ve now been paying for a service that, as it is, is totally useless. I need the wireless router as I live in a very desolate area and DSL and Broadband are not available here. Any ideas?
John, what happens when you connect your computer directly to the Wild Blue modem via Ethernet cable? If it works, you have a wireless router problem. It could be a simple configuration problem.
Helpful piece of writing. Appreciate your sharing
OMG!!!THANKS, I was two minutes away from “going in” on a tech support rep who told me ” we can’t help you with things like routers”. WTF, I just want everyone to know, WildBlue sucks… unfortunately us rural folks are stuck with them. I wish everyday I could go back to BrightHouse Cable and have my internet with no restrictions and unlimited amount of use. I could facebook and myspace and all that other crap for a whole week if wanted to “no getting fapped”.
I am experiencing the same problem. WB modem works fine until I hook up the Linksys router, only problem, router is 13 mos old and out of warranty x 1 mo. I can get no help from Linksys unless I pay more money. That’s all I hear these days is “more money”. I feel some sort of update on the firmware would take care of the problem but I do not know how to get there. Anybody have any suggestions? Please help, hubby is driving me bonkers cause it’s his laptop that cannot access the internet. Thanks and God bless.
Joy, if you go to Cisco and type in the make and model of your router you will find the newest firmware update for it on their site. Also you can print out the directions on how to update it and what to do before you download the firmware update to your desktop. Good luck.
OMG Ty for this post. I just bought a brand new Linksys E2500 Advanced Dual-Band N Router on 8/28/2011 and guess what. It DOESN’T work with Wildblue. It overpowers the modem and kicks it off. I am back to using my old Linksys WRT54G2 V.1. and its okay now. I just bought the new router from PC Connection 2 weeks ago and when I called Linkysys for support and gave them the serial number I was told it was way out of warranty? How is that I said if I JUST bought it. So apparantly PCConnection is reselling old stuff. I am so angry right now I am taking back the E2500 to my local WalMArt because they will take back anything without a receipt and PCConnection wants to charge a restocking fee for the item even though it was their issue selling me a OLD unit. Anyhow Wildblue Absolutely is the worst IP ever, but in 32 days we will have the new launch of the ViaSat and by December we will have speeds up to and above 15Mbps. So if you want to use a router with Wildblue be careful which one you use as they don’t all work …is the moral of this ugly story!