in early january, under subject "help wanted - alfa aip-w610h router/bridge setup", i learned here how to set up an alfa wireless ethernet bridge. the system described in that thread worked until recently.
the system has a public access point, fed via a television cable, to which an alfa wireless-g ethernet bridge radio is connected. the alfa bridge in turn is wired to a zyxel ethernet router to which two computers are wired.
today neither computer can open a web page. however both computers can ping the access point. several other computers, at different locations, connected via wireless adapters to the access point have no trouble connecting to the internet.
logging on to the alfa bridge reveals status "connected" and all other indicators look normal. either computer can log on to the alfa bridge and manipulated its settings.
there is one quirk from day one. when the bridge was connected to the access point and dhcp had assigned addresses to the computer, leaving the computer idle for about ten minutes would result in the dns addresses permanently changing to generic 192.168.n.n instead of the originally assigned 209.55.5.10 and .11. a repair operation failed to get the dns addresses. in the windows xp > network connections > local area connection > internet protocol > properties i hard wired all addresses and the system has worked well for over three months.
when 'obtain ip address automaticallly' is enabled, the computers continue to fail to receive the correct dns addresses from the access point but ip and default-gateway addresses are assigned by the access point -- i think. in 'bridge' mode the alfa turns on dhcp server mode by default. when this is disabled, the coomputers contiue to get the same ip and default-gateway addresses. therefore, i'm assuming the addresses come from the access point.
what line of investigation should i pursue to figure out why the computers can successfully ping the access point but cannot "see" the web?
--david