Any networking gurus who can help me??

I'm desperately looking for some advice on my home networking problem, as I use the Internet while working at home. Any insights at all would be greatly appreciated! In short, I set up a wireless LAN in my house, but now I'm trying to figure out how to get my wired and wireless machines to talk to each other.

Some configuration info:

I have Openband broadband in my house, so of course every room has an ethernet jack (all wired to the basement network/telecom closet). I have one Win2K Server desktop PC plugged into a wall jack in one room. In another room, I have a Linksys wireless broadband router (BEFW11S4v4) plugged into a wall jack. From the 4-port-switch built into the wireless router, I have a WinXP desktop PC connected by ethernet cable. Both wired desktop PCs can successfully access the Internet.

The wireless router is properly configured with a specific SSID, channel, and WEP key. I have two identical WinXP laptops with 802.11b wireless cards that can successfully access the Internet through this wireless router.

What I want to do is find a way for my home office wireless laptops to directly communicate with my wired desktop PCs (and their attached/shared printers). Thinking that a bridge would solve this problem, I bought a Linksys wireless-B ethernet bridge (WET11v2). I thought that the bridge could link my wired and wireless home networks/LANs together, however I have been unable to make this work.

I configured the bridge with the correct SSID and WEP key (per the wireless router's config), but it has been unable to successfully link my wired and wireless machines when its ethernet cable is plugged into either the router's 4-port switch or into a port in the basement closet switch in my house.

Any thoughts as to where I should put the bridge or what I should do to connect my wired and wireless devices? I have a feeling that I'm trying to accomplish the impossible. I guess they both have completely different IP ranges and act as separate LANs despite having the same broadband Internet access, but maybe there is a way to link them?

Thank you so much for your help!!

 

I dont think a bridge would be the solution and here are my thoughts.
I do not have openband (thank God [8D]) so I do have a couple of questions.
1- does openband assign your devices public or private ip addresses?
2- if they assign you public ip addresses, do they assign more than 1 public ip address if more than 1 device is connected from your home?
I will assume that Openband is giving you as many public ip addresses as you have devices connected to their network.
Also, in your basement where everything terminates to go to openband, does it connect into a switch and 1 line goes out? Or do multiple lines go out to Openband? I would think only one would go out.
So from openband, a single link comes to your home, hits a "switch" or does it hit a "router". I need more information on this questions. Then from that point you have multiple cabling going to the rest of your home. All of these links should be on the same subnet, however, if you put a "router" w/nat capabilities (which I am almost certain your Linksys does) then the boxes on the wireless and switch ports should be on a differenet subnet (if not a differnet network altogether) then the other wired boxes in your home. However, your wireless and your 1 XP desktop PC that is connected to your wireless router should all be able to talk together because they should be on the same network and subnet, but your Win2K server may be on a diff. network and / or subnet altogether. I would expect from the design you currently have that your Win2K server can not talk to any of your boxes off of your wireless router and vice versa, but everything off your wireless router (XP desktop and laptops) should have no problems seeing each other. If you can get all the ip addresses of all your boxes and write them down (if you put a public address here, only put the first 3 octets, we dont need anyone DOS'n you...) This will tell you if all your boxes are on the same network or not and aide in troubleshooting.
What I would recommend is to put your wireless router in the basement where all of your connections are, connect 4 of your ethernet cables that go up to your house into this wireless router and the openband connection into the WAN port and make sure you have wireless connectivity to the router down there. This would put all of your boxes on the same network for sure. If they still dont talk to each other then there is a config problem on the wireless router. Your wireless router should be natting to the openband IP address assigned to it and all devices (wired and wireless) should have a private ip address, be on the same private network and nat to the public ip address openband gives you.
If openband is assigning you private ip addresses ( I wouldnt put it past them), then we have to look at this design again because you would have to use your router to nat to a diff. private ip address network than what it currently is set at.
As you can see there are many possible problems, so lets start with this troubleshooting here:
1- get the ip addresses of all your boxes and post them here (only post the 1st 3 octets of public addresses...i.e. 204.192.24.xxx)
2- login in to each device and see if you can ping the ip addresses you just posted, which ones can ping to which ones?
Do these 2 things and Ill follow up. It would help if you could answer some of the other questions too, but I can work from the ip addresses as a minimum.
Thanks,
[|)]

DwArFlOrD

 

KimE,

I have Openband, and have successfully used a Linksys wireless router to connect my Desktop PC and my laptop (both WinXP). I have found that my computers will not communicate if encryption is enabled, and I have to turn off both of my WinXP firewalls. I have a hard-wired network connection going from my multimedia outlet to my wireless router, and one output of the router going to my desktop PC. I have a wireless PC card plugged into my laptop.

With a completely unsecure set-up, I have been able to transfer files between shared folders on each computer, and I get get wireless internet access on my laptop. It's probably not the right way to do it, but I got it to work. I'm not comfortable leaving my firewalls off, so I normally keep them on, which disables file sharing (but still allows wireless internet access on my laptop). When I want to do file sharing I turn off both firewalls, transfer the files, and turn the firewalls back on.

Like I said, it probably isn't the way it is supposed to be, but it works for me.

 

Dwarflord, thanks so much for taking the time and thought to reply! To answer your questions -- The Openband broadband enters my house on fiber and goes through an Allied Telesyn AT-FS212 Fast Ethernet Switch (and the media is converted from fiber to ethernet in here). Connected to the AT-FS212 is a 16-port Netgear FS116 Fast Ethernet Switch. Cables leaving the ports on this 16-port switch terminate in the jacks throughout rooms of the house.

It would appear that Openband has assigned private ip addresses, as every machine wired in through the wall (i.e. the 16-port Netgear switch) has an IP of 10.103.0.x. Everything connected through the wireless router has an IP of 192.168.1.x.

Here is the rundown (where letters replace octet numbers):
XP Desktop = 192.168.1.a (wired through switch port in wireless router; wireless router wired to wall)
XP Laptop1 = 192.168.1.b (wireless)
XP Laptop2 = 192.168.1.c (wireless)
Win2k Desktop = 10.103.0.d (wired to wall)
Win2k Desktop2 = 10.103.0.e (wired to wall)

From each machine, I am unable to ping every other IP address, with one baffling exception: from every machine, I am able to successfully ping Win2k Desktop2.

I cannot get the wireless machines to see or talk to the XP Desktop connected through the wireless router, although the XP Desktop can see -only- XP Laptop1 in "Network Places" but not talk to it (it cannot connect, even though all machines have shared resources). The workgroups are all the same. Every machine has a software firewall enabled, but I would hate to think (as Pats_fan says) that I must completely disable the firewalls to get my machines to speak to each other.

Do you still suggest putting the wireless router in the basement closet? I could put 4 ethernet cables that go up to my house into the wireless router and put the Openband connection in the WAN port, but then I would still have a few other ethernet cables (that are wired to house jacks and which are periodically used) without a home -- that is, they would be useless in the 16-port switch if I take the Openband ethernet cable out of the 16-port switch's WAN port and into the wireless router's WAN port.

Or, do you think that if I change the IP range that the wireless router is NATing to that this might help? For instance, would there be any use in changing the range to 10.103.0.* instead of 192.168.1.*? Or would these still effectively be two separate LANs/subnets?

I noticed that in the wireless router configurator, I can enable or disable dynamic routing; currently it is set to disabled, the default, and is apparently acting as a gateway. Nonetheless, when I click to view the routing table, it tells me:

--Routing Table Entry List--
Destination LAN IP / Subnet Mask / Default Gateway / Hop Count / Interface
0.0.0.0 / 0.0.0.0 / 10.103.0.1 / 1 / WAN
10.103.0.0 / 255.255.254.0 / 0.0.0.0 / 1 / WAN
192.168.1.0 / 255.255.255.0 / 0.0.0.0 / 1 / LAN
-----

I tried enabling dynamic routing with RIP2, curious to see what would happen, but it did not seem to solve any problems (the pings still failed).

I hope this makes sense!

 

You need to seperate yourself from plugging in individual devices to the Allied Telesyn AT-FS212 Fast Ethernet Switch because it sounds like it assigning private IP addresses for you.

If you put a wireless router with the WAN port connected to a port on the Allied Telesyn AT-FS212 Fast Ethernet Switch it should work. You would then need to get a hub that connects to one of the ports on the wireless router and replug all of the cables from each from room to the hub.

 

The Allied Telesyn AT-FS212 Fast Ethernet Switch only has 1 ethernet port, so I think it acts solely as a media converter between fiber and ethernet/cat5. The ethernet cable plugged into this port goes directly into the WAN port of the 16-port Netgear FS116 Fast Ethernet Switch (which has cables from its ports wired to jacks throughout the house).

I think I see what you are saying, though -- do you think it would work if I:
1. Plug the ethernet cable coming from the Allied Telesyn AT-FS212 Fast Ethernet Switch/(media converter) port into the WAN port on the wireless router, and
2. Plug one end of an ethernet cable into a port in the wireless router's switch and the other end into the WAN port of the 16-port Netgear FS116 Fast Ethernet Switch (which has cables from its ports wired to jacks throughout the house)?

 

Exactly! That should do it, give it a try and let me know how it goes.

 

I think we need to get all your boxes on the same subnet. I would recommend the following network config (I think Wes has the same idea here too if I follow it correctly).

"Openband Cable" --->> Wan port on "Wireless router"
then
Connect one ethernet port on the "Wireless router" -->> to one ethernet port on the "16 port Netgear FS116 Fast Ethernet Switch"
then connect all the devices (w/the excpetion of wireless laptops [8D]) in your home to this 16 port switch.

This design effectively nat your lan (192.168. block) network to the 10. block openband assigns to you. If you do have more problems make sure your router is setup as a gateway, all your boxes are running dhcp, all your lan boxes end up being on the same subnet (ex. 255.255.255.0). If you still have problems, you may have to disable your OS firewalls. I have had problems w/XP firewalls in the past and they dont work for me as they should, therfore I configure my router to port forward or port block for me. Your wireless router effectively acts as a "type of firewall" when it nat's to the openband IP address, but you can enhance your router's firewall capabilities by configuring the ports that are forwarded to your lan.
I just read Wes' post again and it does sound like we agree on the design. Good luck and let us know how it goes so others can refer here for problems too.
BTW, what prompted you to use linksys? I had a linksys router a couple years ago, it came with a 1 year warranty and at month 13, the backplane on the router burned up....Ill never get linksys again. I got a D-Link w/ a standard 3 yr. warranty and find it to be more manageable and powerful than the linksys I had.


DwArFlOrD

 

Per your suggestions, I gave this method a try. It worked beautifully!!! I had also neglected to verify that the NETBEUI protocol was installed on all of the machines (talk about overthinking the problem to a hardware level...) - it does not come installed by default in Windows XP. Once I configured the hardware as mentioned above and put NETBEUI on the machines that were missing it, everything worked like a charm. Every machine can now connect to every other machine and its resources.

Thank you all so much for your help!! I cannot tell you how relieved/excited I am.

Give a shout if you know anybody interested in purchasing a barely-used Linksys WET11v2 Wireless-B Ethernet Bridge for a discount

Also, Dwarflord, to answer your question as to why I chose Linksys - I did so mostly because it was the networking equipment I used with some roommates in our shared townhouse several years ago; we had wireless set up there as well, and the Linksys router never failed us then. I tend to purchase hardware based on brands that I have personal experience with or know someone who has used a brand without issue. Had I heard about your problems, though, I may have done a bit more research!

Thanks again, you're <s>life</s>network-savers

KimE