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Setup wireless access point

Guys,

I also posted this on comp.os.linux.networking but I think this group my be more appropriate.

I have just got a wireless access point that plugs into a switch. My setup is like this:

Linux box performing NAT using two ethernet cards on 192.168.0.1 allows PCs on 192.168.0.2 and 3 to see the internet - this works fine using iptables.

I have the wireless access point on the same switch at 192.168.0.50 and it is giving my laptop an IP of 169.254.5.126 on the wireless side.

If I attempt to ping 192.168.0.1 from the wireless, I can see the lights flicker on the wireless gateway, and the lights on the switch that 192.168.0.1 is connected to, but I never get a reply.

I have set the default gateway on the access point to 192.168.0.1, but I cannot see the internet from the wireless network at all.

I know I need to setup some sort of routes, but I dont know what or where! Can anyone help?

Reply to
stephen.odonnell
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snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com hath wroth:

This is not a routing issue.

169.254.xxx.xxx is what the client reverts to using when it can't get a DHCP delivered IP address. Where is your DHCP server? Is it in a Linux server somewhere? Is it in your wireless access point? Perhaps you really have a wireless router with a DHCP server inside? Some hardware descriptions (including operating systems and versions) would be helpful.

My guess(tm) is that you have some type of encryption mismatch between the wireless access point and your client radio. Try it with encryption disabled, no MAC filtering, no IP filtering, no fancy routing, and SSID broadcast enabled. In other words, very generic. If the unspecified access point has a built in DHCP server, turn it off if you're trying to use the one in the Linux server. 192.168.0.1 implies a Dlink access point, some of which have built in DHCP servers.

You can tell that it's working when your client receives a useable IP address in the range of 192.168.0.xxx. Test it by pointing your web browser to: http://192.168.0.50and see if you can see the access point internal web configuration.

If you suspect that broadcasts are not going through your access point, thus causing DHCP to fail, you might want to try enabling the DHCP server in your wireless access point or wireless router. You can have two DHCP servers running at the same time, just make sure the IP address range of each does NOT overlap. For example, one should give out 192.168.0.100-119, while the other give out 192.168.0.120-129. You can tell which one is being used by the IP address delivered. It's not a good idea leaving it this way, but it will work. Make sure you default gateways both point to your Linux "gateway" at 192.168.0.1.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

not a routing issue.

Thanks for the informative reply. I figured this out eventually - I actually dont have a DHCP server, my network is all static ips. I stupidly thought the wireless access point would give a dynamic IP, but it doesn't. When I gave the laptop a static IP on my 192.168.0 subnet everything just started working.

Reply to
stephen.odonnell

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