2 nights ago, for some reason during a storm, my internet cut out. I'm normally good at fixing these things, but currently, I'm stumped. My setup was working perfectly for a few months: 2x WRT54G/GS routers running DD-WRT firmware,
modem > #1 GS router > wireless bridge > #2 G router
> PC #1 wired > PC #2 wired
modem hooked up to #1 router, pc #1 is hooked up wired to router #1, #2 router is hooked up to #1 router wirelessly through a client bridge, and then #2 pc is hooked up wired to #2 router. I've tried all of the basic troubleshooting things, reseting the modem, doing a hard 30-30-30 reset on the router.
Now like I said, this setup worked perfectly without problems for a while until the other night. After that night, several problems came up. First, my DSL speed became crappier. It's already only a 1.5Mb/s connection and now it seems to register generally as 512Kb/sec. I was able to torrent at 150kB/s (my previous cap) but now it's down by a lot to 20kB/s. Now I figure it was raining, maybe some telephone lines went down and at&t just needs to repair the lines, but yesterday I was able to download at my cap again, until the internet crapped out again. I'd be unable to connect to POL, websites wouldn't load, AIM would connect, but then d/c. As of now, speedtest.net gives me a .36Mb/s download speed. At&t has never throttled my internet speed for the past 2 years either.
Secondly my wireless bridge seems to be totally broken. #2 pc is unable to connect to the network or internet anymore. I've tried several times, going through the instructions from the dd-wrt wiki to setting up the wireless bridge. It was strange, but after that night, I found that #2 router has reset to factory default settings. (did it get fried by an electric shock?) In the process of going through the instructions, I found that using auto-detect settings for the IP address, would result in the win7 choosing some random IP, like 165.291.349.240 when my router ip is the standard 192.168.1.1 and it should pick something within normal parameters like 192.168.1.103. Forcing the IP to such would allow me to access the client #2 router through 192.168.1.2, yet it'd be unable to connect online or the other computer on the network. Looking through the webGUI from the host #1 router 192.168.1.1, the #2 router IS connected with a 60% signal rate, so idk. I hope #2 router isn't just fried because I was using it as a wireless card for pc#2 since I don't have one that's compatible with win7 lol.
I guess I'll try swapping the 2 routers, but even if it does turn up that it's fried, it doesn't solve problem #1, unless it's just coincidence. Once, I was able to connect online through #2 PC, but the speed was very slow and ffxi would have the red disconnect icon every so often. Any thoughts?
My problem is probably either very simple or specific so idk, only thing I can think of is if someone else has a similar issue that they solved, with win7 choosing a weird random IP address for connecting to a network.