D-Link 900ap+ and 614+ together gives curious behavior.

I'm going to betray my ignorance here. I have a D-Link 900ap+ and 614+
that are connected to a Netgear RO318 (non-wireless)router. Each
wireless ap serving one half of the house. The Netgear has a fixed WAN
address connected to my cable modem and is serving DHCP. I have 8 ports
of structured wiring throughtout the house. So my kids desktops operate
out of one room and my wife and I roam the house using our notebooks
with 802.11b. Now, if I have DHCP turned on on either of the wireless
ap's either one or both of the notebooks have trouble (as in not
working) accessing the net. Now in trouble-shooting I limited the range
of the 900ap+ to 192.168.0.11 to 19 and the other 192.168.0.100 to 199
(the 900ap+ is 192.168.0.20 and the 614+ is 192.168.0.50). It wasn't
until I turned off DHCP on both of them that my troubles went away.

Now, when I look into the RO318 to see what's i.p.'s it's assigning,
both notebooks have their own i.p.'s even though they are coming in
through only one wireless ap, i.e. one would think they would be sharing
one i.p. address. The one that's assigned to the ap. Curious.

I think I know what's going on but would be interested in other
opinions.

Thanks



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Stoic <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed) ews.com:

> I'm going to betray my ignorance here. I have a D-Link 900ap+ and 614+
> that are connected to a Netgear RO318 (non-wireless)router. Each
> wireless ap serving one half of the house. The Netgear has a fixed WAN
> address connected to my cable modem and is serving DHCP. I have 8
ports
> of structured wiring throughtout the house. So my kids desktops
operate
> out of one room and my wife and I roam the house using our notebooks
> with 802.11b. Now, if I have DHCP turned on on either of the wireless
> ap's either one or both of the notebooks have trouble (as in not
> working) accessing the net. Now in trouble-shooting I limited the
range
> of the 900ap+ to 192.168.0.11 to 19 and the other 192.168.0.100 to 199
> (the 900ap+ is 192.168.0.20 and the 614+ is 192.168.0.50). It wasn't
> until I turned off DHCP on both of them that my troubles went away.
>
> Now, when I look into the RO318 to see what's i.p.'s it's assigning,
> both notebooks have their own i.p.'s even though they are coming in
> through only one wireless ap, i.e. one would think they would be
sharing
> one i.p. address. The one that's assigned to the ap. Curious.
>
> I think I know what's going on but would be interested in other
> opinions.
>
> Thanks
>

/\/\/\/\/\
Stoic,

Letting the 614 and 900 give out IP addresses is OK ... (since you have
made sure they do not overlap with "anyone else" giving out IPs) but you
have to remember that the HOST IP address is usually not everything that
a client gets from a DHCP server.

Normally ... the client also gets an IP address for the default gateway
(which I assume on your network is 192.168.0.1) as well as IP addresses
for a primary and secondary DNS server (this may also use your router's
address since it will handle the request and do the translation .. and
"it" knows the real DNS IPs because it got them via DHCP from the WAN).

Anyhow ... what I think is happening (and you can check the addresses
your laptop is using when you create the failure again) is that you
might be getting a usable local IP address from the 900/614 but you are
not getting a valid gateway or DNS/DNS pointer address.

These can be set static but then it screws the interface up if you use
it somewhere else ... (like at work etc) and defeats the whole advantage
of DHCP in the first place.

Let the router do it and the right stuff.

IMHO as always ...
campbell

In article <Xns93E592EEE3FA1Campbell@207.225.159.7>,
(E-Mail Removed) says...
> Stoic,
>
> Letting the 614 and 900 give out IP addresses is OK ... (since you have
> made sure they do not overlap with "anyone else" giving out IPs) but you
> have to remember that the HOST IP address is usually not everything that
> a client gets from a DHCP server.
>
> Normally ... the client also gets an IP address for the default gateway
> (which I assume on your network is 192.168.0.1) as well as IP addresses
> for a primary and secondary DNS server (this may also use your router's
> address since it will handle the request and do the translation .. and
> "it" knows the real DNS IPs because it got them via DHCP from the WAN).
>
> Anyhow ... what I think is happening (and you can check the addresses
> your laptop is using when you create the failure again) is that you
> might be getting a usable local IP address from the 900/614 but you are
> not getting a valid gateway or DNS/DNS pointer address.
>

That pretty much what I thought. I turned off DHCP on the Access Points
and all my troubles went away.

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I hope this topic isn't too stale ...

Stoic <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed) news.com>...
> Now, when I look into the RO318 to see what's i.p.'s it's assigning,
> both notebooks have their own i.p.'s even though they are coming in
> through only one wireless ap, i.e. one would think they would be sharing
> one i.p. address. The one that's assigned to the ap. Curious.
>
> I think I know what's going on but would be interested in other
> opinions.
>
> Thanks

Because each notebook has a distinct ethernet port, an IP must be
assigned to each. This way the router and the notebooks can identify
the data, its owner, and treat it appropriately, i.e. they can both
surf the net simultneously without interfering with each other.

On a slightly different note - Stoic, can you provide a little more
detail on how you configured your wireless sets-up. My situation is
similar to yours - I have a wired ethernet router (Linksys) that has
broadband internet connected to the WAN port, as well as lan ports
hooked up to my 900ap+ and my office desktop. I also have a remote
desktop connected to the 614+ lan port. I too would like each AP to
serve half of the house but the only way I could get the two computers
to talk to each other was to configure the 900ap+ as an ethernet
client of the 614+. I believe that this will only allow the 900ap+
access to one device (the 614+). Were you able to configure both AP's
as AP's, i.e. depending upon which side of the house you are on, the
notebooks use the 614+ or the 900ap+.


Thanks