Multiple Wireless Access Points

wap gateway = LAN ip wap 1st dns = LAN ip wap 2nd dns = win2000 Server real www 2nd dns ip

wap ip = fixed ip

Just turn them on, they're a layer 2 bridge so don't care anything about dhcp or dns.

You don't say how many you're trying to configure or whether you want roaming or whether they're overlapping.

If you want to roam, configure the same SSID and use channels 1, 6, 11 in a non overlapping fashion.

If you don't want to roam or they don't overlap it doesn't matter.

The access points only need an address for management or communications with say a RADIUS server but you didn't mention that either so i'll presume you don't.

David.

You've lost me there! Do what? Why? The OP mentions access point, not router so there's no forwarding, no lookups, no routing, no NAT.

For management yes although he could do a DHCP reservation since DHCP is already present but same effect.

David.

What WAPs do you have that provide DHCP services? I don't think you are going to be able to provide seamless roaming(*) thru multiple DHCP servers...

(*) Look for a recent thread on WAP54G roaming for discussions of roaming, and why it might not work no matter what you do.

I take it by "LAN ip" you mean the Win2K Server's IP addr, since it is the DNS server?

There are 3 WAPs, and they can provide DHCP services. The rooms are close enough that they all overlap. I do want roaming.

So, it sounds like: same SSID, but unique channels, right?

Thanks - indeed I don't want to use the WAP/routers' DHCP services at all. From your other post, looks like I need to use same channel on all 3 to have seamless roaming, right? The WEP keys already match (don't think the devices support WPA - I'm not in front of them to check).

No. They can and should be on different non-overlapping channels (1,

6, and 11) but all the same SSID. If they were on the same channel, and they had overlapping coverage, then they will interfere with each other. The way it works is that a client radio holds onto a give access point and channel until it loses signal. It then scans all the channels (1->11) looking for the same SSID. Some clients are smart enough to take the strongest (or lowest S/N ratio) channel. Others are stupid and just take the first channel they blunder across. If you have overlapping coverage areas, you can see where there might be a problem.

Otherwise, wait for the IEEE to release 802.11r (fast roaming) which should work much better.

Thanks! I found the WAP can be either configured strictly as an access point, or as a router. Either way, when I configure it w/ an IP address in the same subnet as the LAN wired computers, including the Win2K server, I can connect to the WAP from a wireless client, but the client doesn't get it's IP from the Win2K DHCP server. Instead, it gets an autoconfig-type address.

The WAP, when just an access point, only allows me to specify the IP and subnet mask. When router functions are enabled, I can set WAN IP settings, including IP addr, subnet mask, DNS server addr.

The Win2K server is 192.168.0.3. The default gateway is 192.168.0.1. The WAP is 192.168.0.5, and it's DHCP server capability is disabled. The WAP's DNS is set to 192.168.0.3.

Any ideas why the client isn't getting through to the Win2K DHCP server?

Is there some reason you haven't bothered to disclose the maker and model number of this mystery WAP? By autoconfigurated, I presume it's

169.254.xxx.xxx. (Hint: Numbers, not creative descriptions).

In the WAP mode, the IP address is only for administration and configuration and has nothing to do with connectivity. Access points do bridging and no nothing of IP addresses.

You're IP's look fine if the W2K server is acting as a DHCP server and DNS server. I'll assume that your gateway router is 192.168.0.1. It

*should* work. So do some simple troubleshooting.

Nope. Can you ping the W2K server from somewhere?

Is there some kind of IP filtering going on at the W2K server (as in personal firewall)?

Download and play with this free DHCP query thing:

Access Points don't provide DHCP, you've got a Windows 2000 server that does that already so again, do nothing, just turn them on.

David.

Seamless roaming is only a problem if the IP address changes, there's no problem if all the AP's are on the same subnet.

David.

Are they routers or AP's because they're not the same thing.

No, different channels, same SSID, same subnet.

Would you care to enlighten us as to precisely which brand and model you're dealing with here?! :) Because if you can configure your access point as a router then it's not an access point but a wireless router and the config is different.

Right, lets start again.

Configure them/it as an access point and do nothing else. If it's really working as an access point and isn't a router and there's nothing else you haven't disclosed then it will be doing layer 2 bridging and therefore will be bridging packets quite happily between both the wired and wireless segments.

Clients will then get their addresses from the Windows 2000 server.

David.

I'm not sure about that model, but when I tried their "bridge" mode selection, all control over the wireless settings were lost because the internal web server was disabled in their bridge mode. It's much easier to simply:

1. Assign a proper IP address (more on this later)
2. Disable DHCP.
3. Ignore the WAN port connection.
4. Connect to the wired LAN using a LAN port, not the WAN port. That effectively turns your wireless router into an access point without losing the web server config.

Ok. That means the clients are not connecting to the DHCP server. One obscure possibility is that I've seen some access points block broadcasts. This requires buggy firmware to accomplish and I suspect is NOT the problem here.

Is there some kind of security system running on the W2K server that would prevent it from recognizing a new computer on the LAN?

Try downloading and using a free DHCP tester:

does NOT require an IP address to be assigned in order to find a DHCP server and will function with 169.254.xxx.xxx or whatever.

Incidentally, I'm not thrilled with Belkin products in general and suggest you try an alternative. Almost any wireless router setup as an access point will work for what you're doing.

It should. Something is wrong, but I can't tell without sniffing the traffic to see what's happening. If you feel ambitious, setup Ethereal for sniffing. Connect a hub (not a switch) between the access point and the DHCP/DNS server. Filter for DHCP and ARP packets. If you've never done this before, this is not a trivial exercise and can best be solved by substitution.

Exactly. However, you have no reason to do this, so I would not.

In the bridge (access point) mode, the only thing that IP address does is give you access to the device configuration. It can be any IP address you find useful and has no effect on bridging.

I do this on systems that are short of /24 IP addresses[1] or where I don't want clients playing with the wireless devices. For example, I have the DHCP server deliver IP's to the clients using 192.168.1.xxx, while all the access points and devices are on 192.168.111.xxx. Since bridging doesn't know anything about IP addresses, as long as my management computer can be configured to 192.168.111.xxx, I can talk to the wireless devices. XP and W2K allow multiple aliased IP's on a single interface so this is really easy. However, in your case, I don't see any benefit so setting the device and client IP's in the same /24 network is probably the desired configuration.

Incidentally, if you juggle IP's quite a bit on a laptop management device, I suggest using:

make it easy. I have something like 30 configurations, one per customer network, on mine. Yeah, this is a plug.

[1] Whenever I mention running out of /24 IP addresses (253), someone always remarks that such a large system should be broken up with VLAN's or subnets to control traffic. That's true. However, connecting 2 or more remote offices with a VPN will instantly consume a substantial number of IP's. Each client computah now will have two IP's. One for the local LAN on one subnet, and one for the VPN on the remote /24 network. Traffic is controlled by the routers, but the IP consumption is still substantial.

The devices are Belkin High Speed Mode Wireless G Routers (F5D7231-4). They can be configured to run in "access point only" mode.

The autoconfig address is a 169.254.x.x (I don't have the exact address with me - these devices are at my kids' school).

The Win2K server is both DHCP and DNS server. Indeed I thought that by setting the belkin in "access point" only mode, it would happily pass packets between the wireless client and wired server.

Are you saying in this mode, the WAP *doesn't* have to have an address in the same subnet as the wired computers?

The devices are Belkin High Speed Mode Wireless G Routers (F5D7231-4). They can be configured to run in "access point only" mode.

I only got a chance to try the WAP only mode on one Belkin so far. I'm going to try the others to try to isolate the problem.

It should do, if it isn't it's either not an access point only mode or you haven't got it configured correctly to be so.

It *only* needs an address for you to manage it.

David.

Ah, so they are wireless routers, but you are planning on only using the AP function of them? [As Jeff would say at this point, is there a particular reason why you are keeping the manufacturer, model number, hardware rev, and firmware revision a secret?] If you can turn off the router functionality this should work just the same as an AP, though you may have to connect to the LAN port instead of the WAN port and perform some unknown configuration steps.

Well, I've only tried them on the same channel and they seemed to work fine, but others in this newsgroup have said that you'll want to use non-overlapping channels, so I can't say for sure. I could try it easily enough, but not today...