Linksys WGA11B and MAC Address Filtering

Hi all,

Here's a How-To guide on getting the WGA11B Wireless-B Game Adapter
(Bridge) to work in a secured wirelss LAN. This is valid for firmware
1.0.5, and setup wizard 1.05

You should only need this info if you have MAC address filtering
turned on in your WAP (Wireless Access Point). This also assumes that
you know how to modify those settings on your WAP. It also assumes you
have correctly configured all other settings, like WEP etc. The issue
this solves is not getting a WLAN link light after configuration.

I had a heck of a time getting it to work, after getting NO HELP from
Cisco/Linksys, I resorted to using a sniffer to reverse engineer what
the device was doing, I finally figured out the problem.

The issue had to do with MAC Address Filtering (AKA Wireless Access
Filter) on my WAP. This feature is used to limit what devices are
allowed to connect to your WLAN by filtering on the hardware address
of their network interface.

Normally you enter the MAC Address printed on the sticker on the
device (or you can also find it by pinging a device's IP and then
doing an 'arp -a'). This MAC address is usually shared by the 10-BT
Wired LAN connection and the Wireless interface. Linksys Tech Support
ASSURED me that was the only MAC Address. It turns out that's FALSE. I
determined that whenever you run the Setup Wizard and make a config
change, the WGA11B sets it's WLAN interface to ALSO use the MAC
Address of the PC you ran the Setup Wizard from. On Win2k you can get
that MAC Address by opening a command prompt and typing 'ipconfig
/all' and looking for your Ethernet adapter's "Physical Address" which
will look something like "00-01-02-03-04-05"

Then, in your WAP configuration, you must enter BOTH the MAC address
from the sticker on the WGA11B AND the MAC address from the PC you ran
the setup wizard on (2 separate entries). If you ever re-run the Setup
Wizard from a different machine, you'll need to modify the second MAC
entry in your WAP config.

Hopefully this will help you with your WGA11B setup woes.

- Jon

After finally getting WGA hooked into my PS2, I lost my WAN link light
again. Once again, when I disabled MAC address filtering, link came
back. I figured out why, so here's a correction to my previous post:

*** ORIGINAL INCORRECT POST ***
> I determined that whenever you run the Setup Wizard and make a config
> change, the WGA11B sets it's WLAN interface to ALSO use the MAC
> Address of the PC you ran the Setup Wizard from. On Win2k you can get
> that MAC Address by opening a command prompt and typing 'ipconfig
> /all' and looking for your Ethernet adapter's "Physical Address" which
> will look something like "00-01-02-03-04-05"
>
> Then, in your WAP configuration, you must enter BOTH the MAC address
> from the sticker on the WGA11B AND the MAC address from the PC you ran
> the setup wizard on (2 separate entries). If you ever re-run the Setup
> Wizard from a different machine, you'll need to modify the second MAC
> entry in your WAP config.

CORRECTION:
10-b-ii. It turns out that the additional MAC address that the WGA
uses IS NOT from the machine that you ran the Setup wizard on, but
most likely that of the last machine to connect to it. After setting
it up, and then disconnecting it from my wired LAN and then connecting
it to my PS2 it seems that the secondary MAC Address was now that of
the PS2's network connector. I determined this by opening a command
prompt on a machine connected to my wireless network (via a wireless
NIC only) and pinging the static IP i set on my WGA. I then did an
'arp -a' to determine the MAC Address of the WGA's IP. I then entered
that MAC as the second entry for MAC filtering in my WAP GUI. At that
point everything worked again.