Help! Belkin tech support are useless... - F5D7330uk won't bridgein both directions

Hi

Bought a belkin wireless bridge from ebuyer with their £10 off google
checkout deal.

http://www.ebuyer.com/61885

It has the latest firmware already installed.

I want to plug this into my (cat5 wired) TiVo so I can keep the Mrs
happy and get rid of the cable that's trailing through the house.

So I have:

TiVo ------- belkin < wifi > D-Link DSL G604T --- internet


There are other machines connected but that's the simple version.

Now I want the TiVo to be able to access the internet for its EPG data,
which works fine (so we know the bridge is connected correctly)

However I also want to be able to connect from the rest of the network
_to_ the TiVo to do things like schedule recordings; unfortunately the
belkin seems to be blocking any traffic in that direction.

I tried asking Belkin tech support and I'm hitting a brick wall - they
keep asking me what the SSID is of the network, how many computers I
have, what make of wireless card I have (WTF??).... I've been playing
email tennis since Sunday.

All I want to know is, have I bought the wrong thing? Will this "client
bridge" not actually bridge in both directions? Or is it possible to
configure this somehow?

Cheers

Geoff

Geoff Winkless wrote:
> All I want to know is, have I bought the wrong thing? Will this "client
> bridge" not actually bridge in both directions? Or is it possible to
> configure this somehow?

The bridge isn't blocking anything. If you are unable to connected to
the TiVO then the finger of blame needs to be pointed directly at the
D-Link router. It's almost certainly configured to *disallow*
communication between the wired network and wireless clients. Check
your configuration, paying close attention to firewall rules and to
anything labelled 'wireless isolation'[1]. That should sort it out.

[1] Wireless isolation, in theory, only applies to communication between
one wireless client and another; it would not surprise me, however, to
find that D-Link have implemented it in a bass-ackwards way which is
preventing a wireless client from communicating with *any* other client
including those on the wired portion of the network.

--
Gareth Halfacree http://gareth.halfacree.co.uk
"If Ace Books ever came out with an edition of The Bible, both books
would be edited down to 40,000 words, and they'd be renamed "Master of
Chaos" and "The Thing With Three Souls." - Terry Carr

Gareth R Halfacree wrote:
> If you are unable to connected to
> the TiVO then the finger of blame needs to be pointed directly at the
> D-Link router.

Why? Other wifi-connected machines are quite happily talking in both
directions.

> It's almost certainly configured to *disallow*
> communication between the wired network and wireless clients.

No, it's not.

This is a capture from a linux box connected over CAT5 to the dlink router:

$ ping 10.0.0.131
PING 10.0.0.131 (10.0.0.131) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.0.0.131: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=1024 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.131: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=13.9 ms

10.0.0.131 is a laptop connected wirelessly.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

Geoff

"Geoff Winkless" <usenet-at-geoff-dot-dj@[127.0.0.1]> wrote in message
news:464c2cfa$0$7361$(E-Mail Removed). ..
> Gareth R Halfacree wrote:
>> If you are unable to connected to
>> the TiVO then the finger of blame needs to be pointed directly at the
>> D-Link router.
>
> Why? Other wifi-connected machines are quite happily talking in both
> directions.
>
>> It's almost certainly configured to *disallow*
>> communication between the wired network and wireless clients.
>
> No, it's not.
>
> This is a capture from a linux box connected over CAT5 to the dlink
> router:
>
> $ ping 10.0.0.131
> PING 10.0.0.131 (10.0.0.131) 56(84) bytes of data.
> 64 bytes from 10.0.0.131: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=1024 ms
> 64 bytes from 10.0.0.131: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=13.9 ms
>
> 10.0.0.131 is a laptop connected wirelessly.

So if you try to ping the laptop it works but if you try to ping the TIVO it
fails? What happens if you temporarily connect the Tivo by Ethernet to the
router: do you have proper comms in that case?

The TIVO is evidently able to send traffic to the router which is then
sending on to the internet, and the replies are coming back again if the
TIVO is getting its updates.

So you appear to have a working connection - no MAC address filtering. And
no wireless isolation if the wired Linux can talk to the wireless laptop.

So why will traffic from either wired or wireless computer not reach the
TIVO wirelessly? Weird.

Suppose you temporarily plug the laptop into the Belkin, then you can make
the laptop try to ping other computers on the network (which you won't be
able to test, presumably, with the TIVO connected to the Belkin).

Geoff Winkless wrote:
> Gareth R Halfacree wrote:
>> If you are unable to connected to
>> the TiVO then the finger of blame needs to be pointed directly at the
>> D-Link router.
>
> Why? Other wifi-connected machines are quite happily talking in both
> directions.

I was working on the (obviously incorrect) assumption that there *were*
no other WiFi devices. Your diagram showed nothing but the Belkin
bridge connecting wirelessly, although I'll grant you did mention 'other
devices' without specifying the connection type. At no point did you
mention that you not only had other wireless devices but you had checked
for bidirectional communications with those as a diagnostic step. If
other wireless devices are communicating fine, then my suggestion was
rather useless.

In light of this late-breaking information, I would suggest connecting a
laptop (with built-in wireless disabled) via the Belkin bridge. If
connections from the wired network to the laptop via the bridge work,
then the problem is with the TiVO; if they don't work, the problem is
with the bridge.

> Thanks for the suggestion though.

No problem. Hope you get it sorted.

--
Gareth Halfacree http://gareth.halfacree.co.uk
"If Ace Books ever came out with an edition of The Bible, both books
would be edited down to 40,000 words, and they'd be renamed "Master of
Chaos" and "The Thing With Three Souls." - Terry Carr

Mortimer wrote:

> So if you try to ping the laptop it works but if you try to ping the TIVO it
> fails? What happens if you temporarily connect the Tivo by Ethernet to the
> router: do you have proper comms in that case?

Yep - this is how I had it previously.

> So why will traffic from either wired or wireless computer not reach the
> TIVO wirelessly? Weird.

Well the only conclusion I can reach is that the bridge is set to
default as some sort of crude firewall. I had hoped I would find
something in the bridge's web configuration interface to allow traffic
in both directions but the only configuration pages are to do with
configuring the security for the wifi access and whether or not the
bridge should configure itself a network IP address via DHCP (which
_really_ confuses the issue).

> Suppose you temporarily plug the laptop into the Belkin, then you can make
> the laptop try to ping other computers on the network (which you won't be
> able to test, presumably, with the TIVO connected to the Belkin).

Yes, outgoing connections in this way work fine - in fact this is how
I've been doing most of my debugging since (as you correctly surmised) I
can't really test a lot with the TiVo - it's just any incoming
connection is refused.

Thanks for the post.

Geoff

"Geoff Winkless" <usenet-at-geoff-dot-dj@[127.0.0.1]> wrote in message
news:464c41e4$0$7361$(E-Mail Removed). ..
>> Suppose you temporarily plug the laptop into the Belkin, then you can
>> make the laptop try to ping other computers on the network (which you
>> won't be able to test, presumably, with the TIVO connected to the
>> Belkin).
>
> Yes, outgoing connections in this way work fine - in fact this is how I've
> been doing most of my debugging since (as you correctly surmised) I can't
> really test a lot with the TiVo - it's just any incoming connection is
> refused.

So with the laptop connected to the Belkin and another test PC connected to
the router by Ethernet or wireless, the laptop can access the internet and
the other PC (both ping and file sharing) but the other PC can't even ping
the laptop?

As you say, it looks as if the Belkin is doing some sort of firewall
filtering of incoming traffic and needs to be told to trust addresses in
your LAN subnet. Does the Belkin have any sort of web configuration
interface with *any* config options on it. If it does, I wonder if the
Belkin's own static IP address has to be changed to the same subnet as the
subnet that it is connected to wirelessly; even if it doesn't, it's a good
idea to change it if you haven't done so already so you can access it using
the dynamic IP address that the router is giving out.

Good luck in sorting it out. I know what it feels like to be banging your
head against a brick wall. I'm going through the same thing with a very
intermittent ADSL problem at the moment. Every evening and overnight, my
router gets into a state where it won't access the internet but the
connection is still apparently up - the DSL light is on but flickering madly
as if it's transferring masses of data although there's no corresponding
wireless or Ethernet flicker to denote the other end of any data transfer.
Unplugging and replugging the DSL cable always sorts it out. And the problem
has never occurred during the day time. And it worked fine for two years and
has only just gone wrong. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Mortimer wrote:

> So with the laptop connected to the Belkin and another test PC connected to
> the router by Ethernet or wireless, the laptop can access the internet and
> the other PC (both ping and file sharing) but the other PC can't even ping
> the laptop?

Yeah, that's what _was_ happening...

> As you say, it looks as if the Belkin is doing some sort of firewall
> filtering of incoming traffic and needs to be told to trust addresses in
> your LAN subnet. Does the Belkin have any sort of web configuration
> interface with *any* config options on it. If it does, I wonder if the
> Belkin's own static IP address has to be changed to the same subnet as the
> subnet that it is connected to wirelessly; even if it doesn't, it's a good
> idea to change it if you haven't done so already so you can access it using
> the dynamic IP address that the router is giving out.

I have a feeling there's some sort of issue with arp and MAC addresses:
I finally managed to get it to work last night after reading someone
else's post elsewhere - the bridge takes on the MAC address of the
machine which is connected to the LAN port when it first boots, so if
it's not connected when you power-on the arp tables are all screwed.

The reason this failed with the TiVo is because I set the thing up with
the laptop then just unplugged it and plugged it into the TiVo, which
meant the MAC address wasn't right there...

When I did it the right way: connect the laptop and then power on the
bridge, it works.

I must have done this before but probably not the times when I'd turned
off the firewall - looking back I must have forgotten to turn it off at
least a few times I tried this, which I have to admit is my biggest
error here.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. It's a shame Belkin couldn't have
answered the question though

> Every evening and overnight, my
> router gets into a state where it won't access the internet but the
> connection is still apparently up - the DSL light is on but flickering madly
> as if it's transferring masses of data although there's no corresponding
> wireless or Ethernet flicker to denote the other end of any data transfer.
> Unplugging and replugging the DSL cable always sorts it out. And the problem
> has never occurred during the day time. And it worked fine for two years and
> has only just gone wrong. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Any useful info in the router status page or log? What brand is it?

Geoff