IP Geek help needed

[neadods]

All of a sudden my laptop, which has been coming up and connecting to the home network quite cheerfully, is saying that although the network has an excellent signal strength, it cannot connect because it doesn't have a proper IP address.

Clicking Support/Repair tells me that the IP address can't be renewed. "For assistance, contact the person who manages your network." Who is, unfortunately, me and I'm clueless.

Can anyone help? Can I call anyone? (Comments screened to keep contact info private.)

Comments

[wendymr.livejournal.com]

Still need help?

My husband thinks it's a DHCP problem. He says that - and this is likely if you've set up your router relatively recently - some router software is set to have a finite period on the DHCP lease.

So you need to go into the DHCP server settings for your router. Somewhere within configuration there will be a setting for period of lease, and you need to set that to Indefinite (or closest approximation).

Now, if this is going *whoosh* for you as it did for me, shoot me an email at wendy@lcfanfic.com and I'll see if he can explain it better or maybe talk to you over Skype or something.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

The local costuming computer geek talked me through pinging the router via IE and cycling the network off/on. It's fixed the problem, at least enough for me to feel confident of getting tomorrow's Torchwood!

Hanging onto your address, though, in case I need it. My email's this screenname on AOL, so you've got mine too.