Connect Wireless Maxis Broadband to wireless router

Hi all,

It seems like i only blog once a month (but not even once on December 2007). Maybe because I am busy with my work and not much of free time to blog my experience.

Connecting broadband to wireless router is not something new. Everyone can do it. This is because wireless router are designed to detect the wired broadband connect PPPoE and other types of broadband connection. But bringing this to the next step, connecting the Maxis Wireless broadband to wireless router was a nice experience for me as it wasn't as easy as ABC (maybe as hard as XYZ).

Wireless router normally has 4 port for PC and one port for Internet or modem. The HSDPA modem that provided by Maxis when you purchase has all the setting pre-installed as it detect the unique identity of user through the SIM card attached to the modem. This is a HSDPA connection. You can access the internet through HSDPA connection. This means the internet is in plug-and-plug form. And when you try to plug-and-play it with wireless router, it will return dumping you back with no internet connection. And now the logic explanation for this is Wireless Router is not smart enough to identify the HSDPA connect because it do not have any HSDPA function build-in with it.

How to overcome this? How to successfully fix your wireless broadband to wireless router?

Now the answer for the puzzle, as i mentioned earlier wireless router is not smart to detect the HSDPA internet connection, so why must we plug in to the internet port? The wireless router can just work like a wireless hub/switch. This refers to a situation where the wireless router will assign IP to the PC users automatically to each of the PC connected to the wireless router through the 4 PC ports.

This is where the puzzle being solved, plug in the Maxis Wireless Broadband HSDPA modem into PC port 1 of the wireless router. Don't use the internet/modem port of the wireless router.

So, the Maxis Wireless Broadband HSDPA modem will be in PC port 1 and you may connect other PCs to the other 3 ports available in the router.

Now, go to the wireless router setting page which normally will be http://192.168.1.1

In there, set the default IP address for the wireless router to be http://192.168.0.2 and restart the wireless router.

Then go to the new setting page of the modem through address http://192.168.0.2 and set the DHCP server to active and the IP pool can be from 192.168.0.3 until 192.168.0.255 (use small pool for better performance based on how many users will be connected to the wireless router).

Don't restart the router first. Look in the DHCP server setting, you will find a setting space for Primary DNS and Secondary DNS. Set 192.168.0.1 into the Primary DNS field and save it. Then restart the router.

Taadaaa! Surprisingly you are done! Now your Maxis HSDPA modem connected to the wireless router.

You can now just go to the wireless router setting page http://192.168.0.2 and set your wireless network name and security protections which you will normally do when you connect the wireless router to wired broadband. Restart your router once you done with the basic settings.

You can see your network name appear in the wireless network list and click it to get connected with Internet-Ready through Maxis Wireless Broadband HDSPA(or 3.5G)

I experienced this situation and this solution really worked for me. Drop me an email for further advises if you ever face this situation.

Have a nice day all!