Netgear router question?

[Jonzjob]

I have a Neatgear DG834G router. I want to loan it to a neighbour who has just got a MacBook Pro and a Wifi printer. At the moment they are in the position of not having a phone line due to a complete screw-up by FT! That is another horror story!!!

My question is how do I set up the router so that the MacBook can talk wifi to the printer? Remembering that there is no phone line.

Any ideas anyone please?

[Quillan]

Does the MacBook Pro have WiFi?

If it does you don't need the router at all in fact even with the router on and a phone line (when they get it) will make no difference what so ever. The only slight poblem I can see is if your relying on the router to be the DHCP server but you don't have to do that. I would simply power up the Mac and printer and install the software and see what happens. My guess is it will work fine.

[Jonzjob]

Now that sounds too logical for me to have thought if it Q[:-))] I will be going round this afternoon so I will give it a try?

One thought though, both our Macs, iMac and MBook have wifi, but they only see the Livebox. When I turn the Livebox off they don't see each other. They have been networked.

If what you say id correct is there a different way of networking them?

[Quillan]

Ah well that's because you didn't network the Macs before introducing the router which is creating the IP address's so they are using the router as a DHCP server. Unlike Windows Mac's can't live without one if you turn it off. If we turn our LiveBox off things just carry on as normal because Windows will keep it's IP address if it can't lease a new one unless you force it. Unfortunately the Mac OS still uses the very old Apple Talk network kernel and just 'added' bits too it over the years.

This being the case you would be better off setting up the old router on your network (with reference to DHCP server side) then taking it next door and plugging it in, the fact there is no Internet connection will cause some errors to do with the Internet but the internal network side should work OK. Both ways will work but what will happen without the router is the Mac will become the DHCP server which is OK but your need to configure it again when the router is up and running because you can't have more than one DHCP server in a network. The other alternative is to turn off the DHCP server on the router (when you install it later on and give it a static address within the range of the Mac's DHCP server. You can do all this by using your browser and typing in 192.168.0.1 with the router power up but you need to use a cable to set it up. Problem with that could be that you won't have a DNS address when you connect the router to the Internet as the manual says you must have DHCP running on the router for it to pick up your ISP's DNS address.

So the more I think about it you have two ways of doing this. Set it up by running the printer software without the router then remove the software when you have the Internet connection, set up the Internet side and reinstall the software or simply wait till you have an Internet connection and set that up first then the printer. So thasts all as clear as mud then? [;-)]