2007 22
Have You Had Problems Installing La Fonera?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
I am concerned about us at FON providing the best service that we can to FONeros that here it goes. If you have any problem with with your La Fonera installation, please write it here as a comment to this post and I promise to read it and try to do something about it.
Problems can include things like “I have not received my Fonera”, “I tried to install it and could not make it work”, “I got only the myplace network, but not FON”, “I tried to register in the maps, but I could not get my address correctly in the map”, “I disconnected the Fonera, because it only has one Ethernet port and I only had one cable”, “I connected it, but could not put it near a window because my router is too far from any windows”, or you have not found time to start connecting it, or anything else you would like to say.
Now over 100,000 Foneras were so far connected successfully, but that still leaves tens of thousands that were delivered during the last weeks not connected and I would really like to get a sense of what is going on and help out. Think about it, did you ever want to complain all the way straight to the CEO? Now you can and your complaint will be public and in my blog.
Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars
No Comments
Alan on February 22, 2007 ·
Pretty much all of the above (read the FON boards!). As with most houses in North America, my cable entry is in the basement, so the Fonera is really useless. Installing something like dd-wrt + FON on it would fix it.
DavidB on February 22, 2007 ·
I wanted to give a fonera to a friend in Israel,
but i was not able to install it.
The cable ISP (netvision, from HOT) connection is done with PPTP and VPN like login.
La Fonera support only PPPOE along with the universal DHCP, so i bring it back. in Europe.
He live in a busy and tourist place in Jerusalem, that would have make a lot of connections.
Bill on February 22, 2007 ·
1. I am in Canada, the FON router charges in USD (a no no) (and apparently also charges European VAT!?)
2. The router does not get an address from my cable ISP.
3. would like to use it as a normal router too (more powerful firmware please – and open)
4. my address is shown on the FON pages (a big no no)
5. My ISP forbids sharing
and a few more issues.
Freddy on February 22, 2007 ·
Just read the forum… There are several people complaining about FON.
Or just go through the unanswered support tickets, I expect there are thousands of them.
Goubs on February 22, 2007 ·
I connected it but could not put it near a window because my router is too far from any windows.
The wifi bridge will be wonderful. it will allow us to put the fonera out side using the wifi of another AP.
Viva FON 🙂
Harald on February 22, 2007 ·
Hi Martin,
Some problems with user-zone: the “travel log” shows wrong information regarding dl/ul, also the router-connections.
The personalized access-portal is a mess. The text I enter in my user-zone shows up in the access portal without any linebreaks. The link to my free-site is not working.
The Fon-Maps show wrong special-characters like German Umlauts.
david on February 22, 2007 ·
Hi Martin,
My La Fonera would not give out IP adresses when i first connected it. I had to do a factory reset to get all the led:s to show status ok. After that, it worked but from time to time, i can only see one of the SSID:s, the wifi signal disappears completly (led goes dark) and quite often, the router refuses my password for the private network.
I would love to get in contact with you regarding this and some other things.
euronerd on February 22, 2007 ·
Martin,
see:
http://boards.fon.com/viewforum.php?f=2
You may want to answer the problems there directly, instead of on a blog.
I think it is interesting to know why you suddenly are personally interested in solving Foneros problems, and especially why you use a Blog entry for it. You may want to elaborate on that.
Please confirm you read all problems on your forum, in which case we don’t need to copy them all to your blog !
Raul on February 22, 2007 ·
Hi
I have a problem to connect to La Fonera (My local internet). I have 2 laptops, 1 is working ok but the other 1 doesn’t, the issue I have is when I search for wireless networks I can see my local fon access and the public, when I select the local I get asked for the WPA key that I type after the it starts searching the different channels and never connects to it.
I have a Trendnet TEW-421PC in a Win2k.
Below are screenshots of what I see
Result found of wireless networks.
http://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fonwirelesssc3.jpg
After I put in the WPA serial it shows the page tab below, the channel keeps going over all of them over and over again.
http://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fonscanningtk9.jpg
Other setup I have
ttp://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fonadvanceqo4.jpg
Any ideas what can cause the problem? With the same PC I can connect to my Belkin router also setup with WPA.
Thanks in Advance
hellofon on February 22, 2007 ·
1) “ä”, “ö”, “ü”, “ß” are not written correctly on the FON maps
2) I can´t unpersonalize my LaFonera (delete – not just overwrite with different values – the values I entered originally)
3) Why are hotspots shown in green? – orange ist the color of FON!
Alex Lomas on February 22, 2007 ·
I have an Alcatel speedtouch ADSL router, with the fonera plugged directly into it. It hands out DHCP leases on the 192.168.0.0/24 range and also acts as a DNS proxy, and hands out primary DNS as 192.168.0.1 (itself).
Initially, the fonera picked up an IP address (192.168.0.22) so I connected to the FON_AP SSID, but couldn’t browse to wifi.fon.com. After a few minutes, the “internet” LED on the fonera went out, along with the ethernet link light for that port on the ADSL router and now I can’t pick up the FON_AP or Myplace SSIDs at all.
I tried to connect my PC to the fonera by a patch cable, setting the PC’s IP to 169.254.255.2 but that didn’t help (still didn’t have a hardware link – I’ve tried two new patch cables and a crossover). I also tried to reset it by unplugging the fonera, holding down the reset button, plugging power back in whilst holding the button for 30s. Still no ethernet link/internet light on the fonera.
I logged this as a support request a week ago, but haven’t heard anything back from FON… I’m assuming that the fonera is dead-on-arrival but I don’t seem to be able to get them to send out another one.
Help 🙂
Javier on February 22, 2007 ·
Another marketing trick ?
Forums are plenty of problems without answer…
As this one…
William on February 22, 2007 ·
A few quick answers to some from a FON staffer typing away on his PDA :
Harald and martin –> our techies are fixing these travel log bugs as we speak. It should be working smoothly soon.
hellofon –> we’re working in it. some issues with accents in french too.
Goubs –> yes, a WDS bridge would rock. Yet another cool project to work on 🙂
Martin Varsavsky on February 22, 2007 ·
Jos,
CEO´s can´t be everywhere at the same time. My main occupation in the last 2 months was to find ways to get enough foneros to have fonero densities over 1/10,000 inhabitants in all major countries. That has been accomplished so now I shift focus to making sure the foneras work, in most cases they do but in too many they don´t and I am learning why both from the boards and my blog. In any case we are working on the Fontennas that will greatly increase coverage and we will deliver those in April.
Sabine on February 22, 2007 ·
Hello,
my friend send me a FoneraGetFonera Invitation.
I got my Fonera and it is running. Somehow I screwd up and my friend can not send new FGF nvitations because my Status is still Accepted and not completed.
I dont know what I did wrong, can you help me, so that my friend can send a new FGF invitation?
Thank you
Sabine
euronerd on February 22, 2007 ·
Martin,
(for the rest of the audience: I am Jos…),
Your board exists for about a year now, it had the “help with installation” forum staffed by volunteers for a very long time.
I suppose the time has come to notice what is going on there, and in other postings on the board, and not here in blog-comments.
In the meantime, I made a post to that forum asking people to write their problems on this blog, some may feel invited.
Phil on February 22, 2007 ·
Hello.
I have a small problem and I dont know how to solve the problem.
I have registred my fonera, but NEED to change my Emailadress.
How can I do this??
Thanks
Phil
Martin Varsavsky on February 22, 2007 ·
Thank you Jos!
Martin Varsavsky on February 22, 2007 ·
Hellofon,
We will check into the letters used in German that are not seen by our systems and get back to you.
Tom Taylor on February 22, 2007 ·
Hiya
I’ve got my fon, and its ace 😀
Couple of things:
1) When my address is entered correctly, your site cannot find me on google maps so i have to manually pin myself.
2) Your ‘beta’ map of worldwide foneros is crap and you can’t even search for anything, plus its too heavy (and thats even for firefox!)
3) Fon router should have an option to hide the SSID of the private network, so only the public SSID is broadcasted (users can write down the private SSID and still connect to it if required)
4) I Also have a linksys router, but why dont you form friends with hardware vendors!!? provide them with an API or source-code which they can add into their products, more coverage for you and as a feature that they support fon.com!
5) Suprised you haven’t got this lil beauty of a fonero router selling in major retailers in the uk, brits love to make money or like to connect to free broadband if its being shared!
6) FON router portal sucks, allow users to point it to there own website/blog, having google this and google that and then the odd flickr is a bit tacky!
7) Thats it!
Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor on February 22, 2007 ·
Hiya
Another thing too which is a MUST for your fon routers next firmware release:
WDS bridge
Many isp’s here in the uk give out speedtouch adsl routers, and they support WDS!
If the fon router did too, every1 with a WDS router can double the coverage of their fonero, fantastic!
Hope this can be implemented soon, otherwise i have no use for a perfectly good router 🙁
Thanks!
Tom
Martin Varsavsky on February 22, 2007 ·
We will find out what is going on Sabine
Juan Miguel Venturello on February 22, 2007 ·
I have both the older Linksys FON router and the Fonera, which I got from your blog for spanish readers. Intended to give linksys to in-law, but in have not been able to get it to work – so using linksys instead. Good for you cause FON access point is alive here, bad because one less AP and wasted $$ on this Fonera.
What’s wrong with it? Lost connection on a cycle, or no connection until I cold boot – something I’ve seen reported on the forum consistently.
Great initiative Martin, and I understand support is on the low side given the kind of biz you are trying to start… but sure you are missing on a wider network b/c of people like me, who got tired of trying to get the Fonero to work after a couple of hours, at what appears to be a Fonera problem (and not my network or config).
The Prolific Programmer on February 23, 2007 ·
Shalom,
I ordered a la Fonera on February 7, 2007 and have yet to receive it. I don’t know how long shipping takes to San Francisco, but it would be nice to be able to track it from the shop. Many thanks!
Richard on February 23, 2007 ·
Received the Fon without any problems. Now have to replace the current Wi-Fi router with the Fon. Guess what? I’ve run out of electric outlets. Need to solve that before it goes online. I promise it’ll be soon!!!
Steven on February 23, 2007 ·
1) La Fonera seems to only request an ip at boot and then goes into some “something is wrong…4 scenario’s mode”… untill someone manually repowers the device… At most isp’s (eg ADSL) it’s very common that every 36hours the dhcp lease halts and within 5 minutes a new one is given… I can hardly tell my friends to put a timer on the power outlet of La Fonera
2) Most people are getting a Wifi router these days of their ISP (even with voip on it)… it would be nice if the Fonera could be used as a “repeater” and thus placed at a very good place to reach many people (eg The Window)…
3) It would be nice if the device supported Power Over Ethernet and the “slick” white cable would have an injector at the other side so to minimize cables and thus the owner would be convinced to put the “Imac/Ipod”-slick device on a “can be seen” location… (if it could perform a repeater function without having the lan cable inserted…even better!)
4) The fonera needs attention on it’s local admin side… hence changing it’s NAME or PASSWORD via http://www.fon.com doesn’t work in 99,99% of the cases… so I have to go fysically there & fix it…
5) most of my friends have internet and want to share it… but aren’t technically experienced or eager to check everyday if it’s still running… It would be nice to have some “watchdog” function going to their “mentors” (the one who invited them to the FON network?)… Currently we keep our eyes on the FON maps…
6) Most people have a (adsl/cable) router with only 1 LAN entry… and Fonera would only benefit people who have a wireless laptop…others will have to by a hub/switch/router/usb wifi device if they want to surf themselves… a “lan” on La Fonera would indeed be perfect for this…also it would give FON more control on the QOS between MyPlace & FON_x 🙂
7) La Fonera can’t be put behind 2 routers… (eg cable router -> Fonero Linksys -> La Fonera) … I guess the “mtu” would be too much for La Fonera?
8) La Fonera comes out of the box with only “MyPlace” working but some people don’t have an XP & SP2 installed to connect via WPA… and change these default settings (only then I notice that the FON_x is working as well)…
9) most people seem to lose connection due to the “battery saving” features of every Intel laptop/wifi card and the SSID which changes in the FOnera… -> lost connectivity -> fon broken? -> Fon in the dumpster…
10) no support guy on the phone?
I only found “fon install parties” in France… dunno if there is an incentive to create such things in other places as well…
Martin Varsavsky on February 23, 2007 ·
Richard,
Interestingly, at FON we believe that one of the problems that the foneras have is that they don´t have two Ethernet ports, but we certainly did not think that the problem is that they did not have an electrical outlet 😉
Martin Varsavsky on February 23, 2007 ·
We will look for it Prolific Programmer!
Alberto on February 23, 2007 ·
#12 Alex, could you tell us the email that you used to create the support ticket, please? We will check it and probably we will have to pick up your Fonera to test it in our laboratories and exchange it if proceed.
Alberto on February 23, 2007 ·
#17 Phil, you have to register a new user with the new email, and then ask us to unregister the mac adress of your Fonera from the old user and assign it to the new one.
Alberto on February 23, 2007 ·
#20 Tom, thanks for your feedback. About the street being shown on the maps, the point has to appears on the maps so other Foneros can locate where there’s a Fon hotspot. What you can do is to put a less specific adress on your router’s location.
Alberto on February 23, 2007 ·
#21 Juan Miguel, could you tell us the model of your DSL router, wireless network card on your computer, and operating system, please? Any help you need with configuration or other FON issues, you have access to the customer support website with it’s knowledge base, the Customer Care team, and all the helping Foneros in the forums.
Alberto on February 23, 2007 ·
#2 Alan, we are going to send your suggestions to our development team, we think the best solution by now is to change your antenna for another one with better coverage and vertical polarization.
Alberto on February 23, 2007 ·
#3 DavidB, with la fonera you can configure PPTP connections based, by now you can’t use VPN through la fonera, but we are going to forward your suggestions to our development team, like we do with other fonero’s suggestions.
Alberto on February 23, 2007 ·
#4 Bill, our online shop is not accepting different currencies, I know fonero’s like you understand that we opened some days ago, please give us a chance to improve our online shop. Please try the following, turn off your cable modem and la fonera for a couple of hours, probably your ISP is requiring MAC address authentification and la fonera is an Access Point, nor an ADSL router or a modem cable.
Alberto on February 23, 2007 ·
#8 David, please tell us what kind of broadband do you have, your laptop model as well as the operating system and browser version and also tell us if you have an ADSL router or cable modem, that information is going to be very usefull for us in order to give you the proper response.
Alberto on February 23, 2007 ·
#10 Raul, could you please verify that your WIFI wíreles device is working? If it’s working, probably the problem could be that your operating system needs an upgrade. If your wireless adapter is not working, please use another one from another PC and maybe your wireless device needs an upgrade too.
Antonio on February 23, 2007 ·
What I really didn’t like is that I sent an email to your support regarding a problem and I didn’t receive any answer.
I think this is poor “2.0” attitude.
Hasan on February 23, 2007 ·
I have yet to receive tracking information for my order, placed Feb 7.
Anonymous on February 24, 2007 ·
My experience is that la Fonera works only in Open mode. Any other mode (WAP, WEP) disconnects after a few seconds of use (just enough time to display one page of setup and change it back to Open).
seb on February 24, 2007 ·
The Lafonera has somehow big problems with WMM in terms of the encrypted wlan signal.
I tried it with the Nokia E61 (newest Firmware) and with a Centrino notebook with a 3945ABG device (newest xp drivers). When the Mobile device is using the energy saving mode (wmm) the connection is disconnected every couple seconds! it is not getting disconnected phisically, but the data asked from the server were just not transported.
When i turn off the energy saving mode in the Nokia E61, the WLAN works fine with the encrypted signal. Same phenomenon with the inel wlan card. Is the notebook connected to the power adapter, everything works fine. But when its on battery mode, it sucks surfing through the fonera.
I also tried it with 2 lafoneras, and it was everytime the same!
seb on February 24, 2007 ·
The “Personalize your FON Access Portal” function is broken since some weeks. Adding on the web form a new website, the script from the website adds automatically an http://.
If you now visit your Access Portal and try to click on the webadress you added, two “http://”s are added to the link.
For example i add http://www.mozilla.org on the webform.
The script makes http://www.mozilla.org out of it. When you click on the http://mozilla.org link in the access portal, you are directed to http://http://mozilla.org, and this cant work ;)!
Martín Varsavsky on February 24, 2007 ·
#40: Yours is a very unique experience and we have to understand why that is the case. Indeed most problems we have found is with Macs not being able to detect the Fon network but not the encrypted network and that is an Apple problem that they fixed.
seb on February 24, 2007 ·
i think that #40 has the same problem
i tried to explain with the wmm mode in #41.
It is defenitly a problem in the fon firmware! i have heard from more than 5 people having the same problem not recieving data from the fonera beiing connected to the wpa encrypted signal.
Aspecially with centrino notebooks, or in my case with the E61 from nokia the problem appears, and it doesnt matter which form of encryption you use on the fonera (wpa/wpa2, mixed // tkip/aes or mixed in all combinations).
It seems that some WLAN clients are really sensible about it, although it works with other wlan hardware perfectly, like with the netgear wg311.
Martín Varsavsky on February 24, 2007 ·
Seb,
We are working on this and we will have a reply by next Tuesday.
DougL on February 25, 2007 ·
1) I’ve tried registering for the user forum in the FON user zone but it says that someone must manually approve my forum access. It’s been several days and still no forum access approval. Why does this need to be a manual approval?
2) I got my Fonera connected to my network and registered, however, checking with NetStumbler, I’m only seeing either on SSID or the other; very rarely both at the same time and maybe only for a minute at a time even then. I currently have my laptop connected to the private side and the connection is pretty stable. I submitted this question to customer support earlier this week, but no response as yet.
3) I’ve tried customizing my public access portal to include a “Visit my website for free” link. If I enter http://www.example.com and submit the change, the form refreshes with the link rewritten as http://www.example.com/ in the input field, the portal when viewed from FON Maps shows http://www.example.com/ as the visible text of the link but the link actually points to (href) http://http//www.example.com, which is broken if anyone actually tries clicking on the link. I’ve also tried entering http://www.example.com/ in the customization page and I get the same result. It really gives a bad impression when basic stuff like this doesn’t work properly.
Martín Varsavsky on February 25, 2007 ·
LS,
Fon is very secure and there are two networks, one that is yours, that is encrypted and the other that is Fon´s and is public and they are separated by a firewall. Fon is the only affordable router that offers two SSIDs, two wifi networks coming out of the same router and indeed that is why most people use Fon because it is secure.
Martín Varsavsky on February 25, 2007 ·
This is for those who may have problems connecting FON to the Xbox.
http://digg.com/apple/Apple_802_1n_Airport_Extreme_Xbox_360_Incompatibility_a_workaround
Jose Antonio Arribas on February 26, 2007 ·
#42 Seb, thank you for your advice. We are going to check it and resolve it in case of error
Alberto on February 26, 2007 ·
#24 Shalom, La fonera was delivered February 21 in California, signed by por T Scott.
The Fedex tracking number was 253374270585674.
Martin Varsavsky on February 26, 2007 ·
Javier,
Rather than a marketing trick this is marketing suicide, but I just need to know the problems that people are having to make FON easier to install. So far the feedback has been extremely useful for us.
Alberto on February 26, 2007 ·
#46 DougL, please, tell us your FON account in order to verify your register in the fourm and the ticket that you open in the CS.
Steve on February 26, 2007 ·
I received the fonera no problem (thank you). However, upon installing I first had to turn off XP firewall (no issue) and then encryption issues surfaced. I changed LAN setting to auto and network auth to WPA and data encryption setting to TKIP and things seemed to work fine. On a 2nd laptop with a cheaper TrendNet adapter I changed config like above and did get to work, too. The connection kept getting very weak, though, (PC and router remained unmoved). I decided to use 2nd laptop with dedicated cable from dsl router (sbc/att dsl) so at least could enjoy wireless with 1st laptop and provide “social access” for others. I used a Netgear switch box to connect the cable from dsl modem and then ran one cable to 2nd laptop and one to fonera router. I kept running into issue of error message stating something to effect of “competing IP addresses” and dedicated line system would slow to crawl (some internet sites would not open at all). I searched for remedy on FON boards, and, finding none tried configuring myself. Then I gave up entirely and was going to go back to wireless on 2nd laptop. But, now the IP address is there, but it won’t register a gateway or DNS address. My wireless adapter recognizes the two FON connections yet I get no connection to the internet. I’ve tried to find hints on FON board again but the posts there are not extremely “novice-friendly.” So, in effect, I’m afraid I really screwed up wireless ability in 2nd laptop. If I disconnect fonera and just use dedicated ethernet line from dsl to 2nd laptop it works fine. But, then I can’t use wireless for 1st laptop not can I provide access for others. I know that I am not a “techy,” but I have a basic understanding of what is involved. I’m hoping that you can steer me to a site/post/email that can help me through this. Otherwise, I really should pass this router on to someone who can utilize it to provide service spot for others. Thanks in advance.
kat on February 26, 2007 ·
I received the fonera router quite a while ago. I connected it to my network no problem. I can connect to it wirelessly. When I attempt to register it to my account, the registration is rejected. I can however continue to browse the internet through the public network. I cannot connect to the private network at all – I cannot see the router in my personal account – I cannot change any of the system config settings … as I have no registered routers. I attempted to get customer service to register the router to my account also, but they cannot either.
seb on February 27, 2007 ·
And still a lot of people have problems with the totally overloaded DNS Server in Madrid. When are you going to change that?
Like every second day someone is complaining about a slow internet, and thinks that it is a problem from the LaFonera, although it is just the DNS setting. 213.134.45.129 ns01.fon.com gives often timeouts and “server not found”. This makes a bad impression to fon!
Raul on February 27, 2007 ·
On ref to:
# 38
#10
Hi Alberto I go a reply via the forum, for some strange reason I can connect ok using WPA to my Belkin router but not to La Fonera, I can only connect using La Fonera if I change to WEP in that PC I tested with another 2 PC’s and both work OK suing WPA, so it must be my Wireless card.
Thanks
Björn Felten on March 1, 2007 ·
Great news Martin, that we no have a channel where someone actually listens to the feedback from us Foneros!
I’ve assited in installing four La Foneras now, and they all installed just as quick and perfect as promised (as long as you follow the simple instructions).
But after installing comes the buggy part: registering.
First of all the English registry page has an error regarding the street number. You can only enter it as part of the street name, not in a specific field as on the Spanish page. This will show up as NODATA on the map. Going to the Spanish page and entering the street number will solve this.
Then there’s the everlasting story about umlauted characters on the map. If you care to spend a couple of minutes checking e.g. one of the Swedish POI files, you can easily see what’s wrong: the characters are converted *TWICE* to UTF-8! Someone goofed when writing the script — it’s as simple as that.
Both of the above issues have I written numerous times about. To your support team as well as in several blog entries on the English and Swedish boards ever since I first became a fonero in August last year. I can’t understand why it would be so difficult to fix those two bugs.
Finally, I really would want PoE on La Fonera. Isn’t it possible to manufacture a pair of injectors/dejectors to connect on each end of a standard ethernet cable, to give PoE functionality with all existing equipment?
Alberto on March 1, 2007 ·
#59 Björn Felten, I send your feedback about the registration process. And your idea about the POE or power injector. Thanks again.
Kian on March 1, 2007 ·
I submitted my orders in late Jan.
Till now i have yet to receive La Fonera.
I have emailed shop@fon.com on several occasions but without reply.
I was wondering if fon could provide the fedex shipment number in order for easy tracing by the user.
This will allow the user to be updated on the whereabouts of the package.
Martin Varsavsky on March 2, 2007 ·
We will look into this Bjorn
Antonio on March 2, 2007 ·
Hi everybody. I wrote a script that transforms La Fonera as a Repeater and Access Point, you can find it at http://www.blogin.it/fonera4.php
Hope you enjoy …and improve
–
Antonio
Slo3ri on March 2, 2007 ·
I cant access the “Configure your FON social router” page anymore since i filled in the location of it en clicked on submit.
Now i’m getting a white screen! (no errors)
Can you help me ?
Björn Felten on March 3, 2007 ·
I just checked all the other languages (even the Asian ones) and it seems as if the English page is the only one where you cannot enter a street number!
Choosing Italian might be a good idea for those that only speak English, since it’s almost entirely in English. 🙂
Maybe I should add that I’m talking about My Personal Info -> Address Info.
And while you’re at it, can you please remove the Region field, at least when you choose Sweden. Often enough the region list doesn’t load, and regions are never used in Sweden, more than in political contexts. And I know the same goes for many other countries — at least European ditto.
Alberto on March 5, 2007 ·
#64 Slo3ri, do you are trying to locate your FONspot in the maps? Please, send us your email in order to help to you.
Slo3ri on March 7, 2007 ·
No, I’m trying to configure my fonera on the website.
You should check the english forum, more people are having the same problem!
Greetz,
Slo3ri
Joel on March 11, 2007 ·
Hello,
I first installed my Fonera and was able to access the public FON_AP signal with no problem, but the private signal MyPlace was not broadcasting. Eventually I disconnected the device and plugged my laptop straight into it, pulled up the config web page and updated the firmware and solved that problem.
NOW, I am having a very frustrating scenario: the private network disconnects every 3 minutes on the dot. It’s down for about 15 seconds, then it automatically reconnects. In testing the public signal, it is God-awful slow. That’s not the most important to me right now though. The signal cutting out every three minutes, even when I’m right next to the antenna and all power management features of my WLAN card are off is causing me to go back to my non-Fon wireless AP.
There’s a LOT of discussion on this in the forums, but I can’t share my experience there because I signed up for an acocunt 2 days ago and still haven’t been approved (manually?!?)
So that’s the story from just one U.S. Fonera.
Hope this all works out – I would love to share my wireless, if only it didn’t mean this much frustration and extra work.
Joel on March 16, 2007 ·
I really like this router! I’ve only got one problem with it-
I’m using a SpeedTouch ADSL USB modem, with a Windows XP computer using Internet Connection Sharing as a “router”. Since the wired LAN is being used to share the internet connection, the XP computer has to have a set IP address (192.168.0.1).
My wifi client computer is an OS X laptop, and I have no trouble connecting to the WLAN or browsing the Internet. What I can’t do, however, is access the shared resources on the Windows “router” machine. I am assuming this is because the wired LAN (between the Windows machine and La Fonera) is a separate network from the WLAN. My inability to connect to La Fonera’s GUI from the Windows machine confirms this.
So I think this is my question: is there a way to bridge the WLAN with the wired LAN?
Thanks!
Alexis on March 16, 2007 ·
Well, I’ve spent more than 4 hours traying to make two different laptops benefit from the LAN of La Fonera, but I failed.
The connection is established in both cases, the laptop can see La Fonera, but not the internet.
And in addition, a message appears about an IP address conflict.
And the webpage wifi.fon.com is down.
I give up.
DarkMantle on March 19, 2007 ·
I cannot access my LAN from the MyPlace network. This means my wireless laptop cannot print.
I thought this would be a basic thing. Even if the Fon router had one output network port it would work plugged into a switch. Or some sort of NAT traversal.
Instead. I think I may need to return the router and buy a real wireless router.
Bearer on March 19, 2007 ·
I just recieved my Fon router, hooked it up and the two AP’s came up – but the private one will not connect and issue a DHCP lease no matter how many times I try re-entering the S/N for the WPA key
Suggestions?
Bearer on March 19, 2007 ·
Updated my Atheros client utility and it worked, but its definitively related to the Fon as I use a WPA WLAN (thouhg single SSID) normally here..
luigi on March 22, 2007 ·
I waited for about 3 months to get my fonera. During this time my complaints were completely ignored. I tried registering on the boards twice to ask what’s going on, to this date I haven’t received the authorization.
Now I finally got my fonera, but I have problems. The two SSIDs keep disappearing. For a while it’s ok, and at times it’:s 5 minutes working, 5 minutes not working, 5 mins working…
I’m also quite disappointed with the documentation. It seems there’s a management console, but no mention of it in the printed quick guide or the CD (which contains just a PDF of the printed quick guide). After looking through the FON board and people’s blogs for quite a while, I was able to log into the console, but there was no authoritative place to just tell me how to do it.
Iain on March 23, 2007 ·
I recieved my fonero today. It took almost 2 hours of reading the manuals, searching google and the fonera forums before I could get it to work.
The problem was only one SSID was showing up. The fix was to change the encrption method for both SSIDs to show.
Installation was a pain and i’m sure many people would have gave up before i did.
Martin Varsavsky on March 23, 2007 ·
Iain,
Thousands of people install the fonera in less than a minute. What was the problem here?
John on March 29, 2007 ·
I have a friends fon here he could not figure out how to set it up so he brought it to me. I had little trouble setting mine up. I tried to set my friends fon in same way as I had done with my own. The problem seems to be that it lets you register but never lets you become a Linus or a Bill it always tells you it’s Alien.
Can you explain why this is so? Thanks
Larry on March 30, 2007 ·
Hi Martin,
I’ve installed 2 fon routers now, one at my house and the other at my parents house. Installations went smoothly other than the power supply at my house quit working after a few minutes, still haven’t found a compatible one for it laying around. My biggest concern was the fact that without logging in anybody that connected to the FON_AP could access all of google, watch all the videos they want, browse by using their translator. I didn’t want a lot of unlogged traffic. So, I throttled back the bandwidth on the FON_AP so random people couldn’t soak up all my bandwidth without logging in. If the access could be narrowed to when they log in, I would gladly give logged in users much more bandwidth.
About the power supply, the fon is 5.0V at 2.0A, I don’t have any of those lying around.. would a 4.5V at 3.0A be too much power?
Martin Varsavsky on April 11, 2007 ·
Alexis, we will contact you this afternoon.
frederic on April 14, 2007 ·
Martin,
i LOVE fon but i NEED to work through a VPN. What can i do? I am obliged to deconnect my fon router when i work…. Please make it possible to use a VPN!
BR from Stockholm
f.
Ramesh Kr. Pudasaini on April 18, 2007 ·
I have a belkin wireless G router of model no: F5D7230-4. I have PPPoe internet connection. Whenever i conect to the internet ir disconnet in 4 mins. will u pliz anybdy halp me? pliz help me.
Adrian on April 27, 2007 ·
Just got a la fonera as an upgrade to my original linksys fon. I can’t access my private network my laptop is wep only so it can’t get and IP from DHCP or acces the management console to change it as this seem to only be availiable on the private wifi inteface!!
Why can’t it be shipped in WEP and allow security to be turned up by the user. Or should I buy a new laptop!!
Olaf on May 4, 2007 ·
Hi Martin,
thanks for offering personal help via your blog! I have been struggling setting up the La Fonera and I gave up already. Now my roaming rights have been put on hold I gave it another try and went thru a couple of posts on FON boards. I still can’t manage to make the FON_AP to appear. My private SSID works fine. I guess I am having a problem as the La Fonera is plugged into a Linksys WRT54GL set to DHCP and it is using the same IP addresses. However, I can’t change them as it would mean too much hassle. Anything I can do by only changing the La Fonera? Thanks.
mysterysword on June 28, 2007 ·
I recently upgraded the firmware on La Fonera. It started to upgrade, but then it came to the “Page cannot be displayed” page. Since then, my PC hasn’t showed any wireless connections exist.
Send answer to animekenshin333@yahoo.com.
Thanks in advance
Jan Mensink on August 14, 2007 ·
I have a serious problem with the La Fonera!!!
When I try to connect to Google Maps of the Netherlands the website can not be found.
The URL is: http://maps.google.nl/
When I use my old WiFi router there is no problem and also when I connect my laptop directly to the modem there is no problem.
So the problem is La Fonera!!!!
I need immediate help to solve this problem!!!
jexxer on August 19, 2007 ·
I have one great issue with fonera.
I use a Qtek S200 with windows mobile 5. The WLAN implementation seems to not be very good and that is the reason why i can not connect to my private SSID. Not exactly not connect, i can connect, load one or two webpages and then the connection stalls.
afaik this is a result of the two SSIDs sharing one MAC address what confuses the WM5 device. On the DD-WRT forums brainslayer suggests that the only solution currently is, to hide the SSID of one of the two APs.
So guys at FON please, please update the firmware and let me hide my private SSID. That should not be a big deal.
Arnim on September 24, 2007 ·
Hi,
I tried to set up my Fonera for my Macintosh, but on the http://192.168.1.1 the fonera page with private and public networks setup did not open. The page opening was the dd-wrt configuration page in grey colours with many technical modification possibilities.
Perhaps anyone could let me know how to handle it andset up the private and public networks.
Thanks
BRUNO on October 12, 2007 ·
Cannot find “http://http//www.example.com/” DNS Error – Server cannot be found
Chiva Congelado on October 22, 2007 ·
Tried to get the Fonera working with the Apple AirPort Express. It did work eventually, but was really tough and required me to change the settings to WPA instead of WPA/WPA2 mixed as both routers seem to not know very well how to talk to each other.
Sean on November 18, 2007 ·
I’m also having problems with an xbox360 wireless lan adapter and linking to my La Fonera router. The xbox see the network, and if I put in the WEP code it goes throught the stages of connecting. Then the confusion starts, the onscreen info says connected to the network, but the light on the wireless adapter is still red (waiting to connect to a network) and the xbox check link to xboxlive fails at the connection to the router stage. I saw the previous post, but since I do not have an airport, I couldn’t see exactly where this is going. I saw one comment talking about WEP problems, but disabling security on La Fonera router doesn’t help in any way. At the moment I use my La Fonera for connecting my MacBook and also PSP, and WEP with 10 digit password is the only security that works for my setup and any visiting friends who pop in for some network play on my wireless LAN. Spending nearly 9000yen on the xbox wireless lan adapter means I hope I get a solution soon, and have not wasted my money!
Alexander on December 27, 2007 ·
Ports blocked with La Fonera behind router
I have to use La Fonera behind another router (Asus WL500g). When I use the private WPA connection (MyPlace) from La Fonera, all ports except 80 are blocked. For instance, I cannot connect to Google IMAP on port 993.
This is definitevely a problem with La Fonerara. The wireless access point that I used before La Fonera did not have this problem. Please HELP!!!
Regards,
Alex
Christian Drewing on December 31, 2007 ·
Well I got heavy problems with the FON router. Both SSIDs are available but I cannot connect to any of them. Using XP SP2 my Notebook will connect to the WLAN but all HTTP requests fail. It seems that the DCHP server on the router doesnt work properly. No name will be resolved/rerouted to the FON service. Even when I try to cpnnect via direct IP input I got no connection.
Any ideas?
Kind regards
Christian.
cezar on March 23, 2008 ·
not able to connect to myplace, with my phone witch is a nokia n95 and has wpa encription, all others acces points work flawlwssly. i was able to define a myplace acces poinr providing the serial nr as a wpa key but when comes to browsing nothing heapends, fon_ap works ok and also my other usual AP of my home wireless router (i have ADSL and the fon router conected to one of the lan ports)
Arto on November 15, 2008 ·
I can connect to La Fonera+ only at a distance less than 8 meters. If my laptopis not at a distance less than 1 meter, the connection is very very unstable. If the laptop is just next to La Fonera+ the connection is just very unstable. I suspect there is something wrong in the antenna plug of my La Fonera+. I have written to tech support but so far got only the usual advise.
michael on November 19, 2008 ·
UK users get a raw deal. no % of earnings and our bandwidth can be used by any BT user as BT is reselling our internet. and we do not get unlimited usage from BT
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martin on February 22, 2007 ·
i changed the address of my router 3 days ago… now my travel log shows all connections to my own router not to the original but to the actual address which in fact is not correct for a “travel log”… also i think all other users now are able to see were i moved to :(…