Two 802.11 computers on the same network can't communicate

Hi.

I have a very simple home LAN. My laptop uses an SMC 2635W PC Card, my desktop a Motorola WE800G wireless bridge, to communicate with a Belkin F5D7230-4 wireless router. It works flawlessly in terms of each computer being able to reach the external Internet -- but the two computers can't see EACH OTHER. If I ping from one to the other, less than one packet in 50 gets through. This makes things like printing and file sharing non-starters.

If I plug either into the router using a patch cable, everything's fine.

I've flashed the router to the newest ROM.

The problem persists if I boot the laptop as either Windows XP Service Pack 2, or Debian GNU/Linux (Sarge). Doesn't appear to be a driver thing. The desktop is always Sarge.

The PC Card is 802.11b, the bridge and router are "g", but surely that's backward-compatible?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

The bridge or the laptop's WIFi card may be faulty. sh*t happens.

Does the laptop WiFi work in other locations ? If it does you have a case to call Belkin and see if they can suggest anything. LOL.

Just for grins, you might download netstumbler to your laptop and see what it thinks of the signal your AP is putting out. (netstumbler is a little particular about models of WiFi cards. good luck.)

Try resetting your bridge to factory values.

Perfectly.

Belkin, when called, said "flash the router's PROM." This didn't help.

This can't be correct. The access point MUST allow them to communicate, or the whole idea of a wireless LAN is defeated.

Make sure your firewall is not blocking the IP address of your computers in the network. it will block the file sharing. Assuming you are using zonealarm, you can add your computers in a trusted zone. That should do the trick. Also look at

Carl F>

'Infrastructure'

Apparently you missed the "both computers running Linux" part of my posting.