On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 14:47:34 GMT,
(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>Using an Actiontec Model AU802C, 54g wap. Works well and essentially
>no problems. Latest firmware installed.
>
>I have three wireless hosts, one using an Actiontec 54g card, one
>using an Asus b card and the third is a Dell Axim 30. All connect
>fine and from their side all is well.
>
>On the wired LAN I'm running Netcrunch for snmp mgt.
Ouch. $600 per monitoring station.
>After running a
>discovery I noticed the three wireless hosts failed to be discovered,
>though the wap was discovered and ID'd fine.
>
>I then found I couldn't ping the wireless hosts, though each of them
>can ping anything on the wired network.
>
>I tried several wired boxes with the same results. In addition, while
>the wireless hosts can ping the wired hosts and anything on the
>"outside", they cannot ping each other.
>
>Is this normal behavior? Seems odd and I'm figuring I just have
>something fouled up.
Well, that's actually a rather desireable feature for coffee shop hot
spot access points. You don't really want the wireless clients to see
each other. However, that's not normal behavior. Since it's a
bridge, it should pass everything in both directions.
Deja Vu (again). The only time I've seen something like this is with
buggy access point firmware. The piece of junk ran out of working ram
so some clever programmist decided that the wireless access point
could live with only two entries in the MAC address table for the
wireless port. You could ping between two wireless devices, but if
you associated a third wireless device, it was a crap shoot as to
whether anything could be pinged between wireless ports.
They fixed that with an update plus more RAM, and added a new bug. If
you enabled MAC address filtering, the filter was unidirectional and
would not filter anything going OUT of the wireless port. That was
suppose to be an easy way to deal with broadcasts that need to bypass
the filters. Instead, it resulted in preventing the wireless radios
from communicating with each other. It took 3 released revs to get it
right.
The first step to solving a problem is to assign the blame. Let's see
if it's an access point or IP related problem. Open a DOS (cmd or
command) window and ping the various IP addresses to populate the
local ARP cache. Follow each ping (successful or otherwise) with:
arp -a
You should see the MAC and IP address of all your assorted computahs
including the access point IP and router. Repeat on all PC's to
establish a pattern.
If the MAC address and IP pair does NOT appear, you have some kind of
disgusting firmware problem in your Actiontec access point. For fun,
try turning off all the fancy features (WEP/WPA, MAC address
filtering) on the access point and see if it helps. Also, if it has a
"broadcast pass thru" setting, enable it.
If the MAC address and IP address DOES appear, you probably have some
kind of personal firewall running on the various PC's making it
unreachable at the IP level. Turn it off. It's also possible you may
have a rather contorted network IP layout. Try running:
tracert ip_address_of_something
(or traceroute) and see if the ping packets are trying to go via the
default route (i.e. your router) instead of staying within the class C
LAN.
If you have a Linux box or OS/X available, try using "arping" to ping
devices at the MAC address (layer 2) level.
http://www.habets.pp.se/synscan/prog...hp?prog=arping
--
Jeff Liebermann
(E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 AE6KS 831-336-2558
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