Good afternoon -
I've got a client I've set up a wifi network for. It's a domain network, with SBS2k3 as the DHCP server. We added two Linksys WAP54Gs (replacing a USR5451 AP/Router and Dell TrueMobile 1184 AP/Router that were nothing but trouble, and didn't support WPA). It's on a private range, 192.168.0.x, wired computers all working as they ought to, and most wireless computers working as they ought to. We're using WPA-PSK w/ TKIP (an upgrade from the WEP they were using).
Here's the fun part. I've got 4 laptops which aren't able to pull IP addresses. They find the wireless network, they connect (using the PSK over WPA), and then they sit trying to obtain IP addys for (seemingly) days. The traffic counters (either in the WZC util or in the card-specific utility) show passing traffic - that is to say the counters increase as time goes on - but an IP is never received. Specifying a manual IP address leads us to successfully connecting, and /appearing/ to have a full connection, but not being able to ping anything except for the single specified IP. Can't ping router, can't ping the AP's IP, can't ping the server - only the IP we configure manually.
The machines that were having issues were all Dells, until my laptop (an HP) took on the same symptoms today. The four computers experiencing the trouble are -
- Dell Inspiron 6000 w/ a Dell Wireless 1350 WLAN Mini-PCI card (rev
4.5)- Dell Latitude D620 w/ an Intel Pro Wireless 3945ABG
- Dell Inspiron 600m with an Intel Pro Wilress 2200BG and an HP Pavilion ze4500 with a Broadcom 802.11b/g card (thats as specific as the device mgr gets - and I bought it used, so I haven't looked into it further).
I have also discovered that plugging in a Netgear PCMCIA card will allow one the computers (the Inspiron 6000) to connect right away, no questions asked. Pop the same card into the Latitude D620, and I've got the problem again. The WAPs are each configured as Access Points, rather than bridges, repeaters, etc. I've taken one of the APs and made it a seperate SSID as a testbed to find out wtf is going on. I can reproduce the problem no matter what length key, how often the key renews, TKIP or AES, SSID, or channel we use.
In bulleted points, here's what we know so far:
- The APs /do/ work - most computers can connect without issue.
- When I drop encryption, either entirely or down to WEP, the computers that are having issues can connect without fail.
- As soon as we bring up WPA, either with TKIP or AES, the trouble is reproducable.
- All the computers are using the latest drivers, bios revisions, firmware, etc.
- The APs are using the latest firmware (3.04)
- When I use a PCMCIA card on the Dell Inspiron 6000, it works fine
- When I use the same PCMCIA card on the Dell Latitude D620, it has the same problem.
- Linksys Tech-to-Tech Partner support, and the Dell Gold Support department (and their support people) are all stumped. The Linksys guy I talked to said he saw the problem once, but bringing it up to the latest drivers/firmware fixed it. No joy this time.
Anyone seen anything like this? Anyone have any suggestions? We're boggled over here.
NM