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Netgear WGT624 won't forward DHCP?

Are you using the DHCP server in the WGT624 or do you have a server running a DHCP server on the wired LAN? Hopefully, you don't have both running in the same IP address block.

DHCP requests are broadcasts and some router have setting to control how broadcasts are handled. However, that's always between the LAN and WAN side, not between two parts of the same LAN (wired and wireless). By my astute guess(tm), broadcasts should always propogate between the LAN and wireless.

One exception is if the WGT624 has some kind of "client isolation" feature enabled. That is designed to prevent each client from communicating with other clients as in a hot spot. If you have a Linux or Windoze server running a DHCP server on the LAN side, this "client isolation" feature will block everything including broadcasts to the other LAN/wireless clients. No clue if the WGT624 has this feature, but it's present and functional on the Linksys WRT54G.

You might wanna do some DHCP testing with a free tool:

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the DHCP Query Tool at the bottom of the page. That will let you test how DHCP requests and responses are doing without sniffing.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann
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Hi, Trying to setup a Netgear WGT624 v2 (with firmware 4.2.6) as an access point (not a router), I got frustrated that the clients would associate to the WGT624 but not get an IP. I hadn't yet got around to sniffing the network or anything, but I noticed a user's comments on Pricegrabber that states that the WGT624 (like other Netgear devices, supposedly) won't forward DHCP requests from the wirless side to the wired side. Hence, my wireless clients' DHCP requests go unanswered by my existing DHCP server. Has anyone else verified that this is indeed intentional on the part of Netgear, and do all their models behave this way? This seems ludicrous to me. I have an existing router that I don't want to replace; if I can't make the WGT624 behave as just an AP, it's going back.

Comments/suggestions?

TIA, Jonathan

Reply to
Jonathan

Well, if things appear to be incureable in the Netgear WFT624, then enable the DHCP server in the WFT624. Make sure that it's range of IP addresses delivered do NOT overlap those delivered by your LAN firewall/router DHCP server. The catch is that some wireless routers do not allow you to specify a default gateway other than that of the routers LAN IP address. I don't recall exactly which models do this, but it's epidemic. If the client points to the WFT624 as the default gateway, it won't work. You could force the default gateway in the client computers to the firewall/router, but that will rapidly become a maintenance and setup headache.

Correct. It's actually cheaper to buy a wireless router and use it as an access point, than to buy an access point. You also usually get a

4 port switch along with the router that's missing in the access point version.

I don't think it's an intentional feature. Something is blocking broadcasts between the wired LAN ports and the wireless. I guess it's time to play sniff some traffic.

Incidentally, I worked on a Dell 8200 with XP SP2 on the bench that absolutely would not deliver an DHCP IP address from an early BEFW11S4 v2 wireless router when encryption was enabled. Turn it off encryption and it works. I've seen this several times with other wireless routers and have never bothered to investigate the exact connection between WEP encryption and DHCP broadcasts. Anyway, try it with encryption disabled and see if DHCP magically returns.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

There is an existing firewall/router, with DHCP server, on that segment. So you disable the DHCP server in the wireless router, and connect the upstream router to one of the wireless router's LAN ports. For most models, this implementation effectively makes them access points, not routers. So when this is done with the WFT624, the wireless clients associate to the network just fine, only they never get an IP from the upstream router. It has been suggested that this is a Netgear "feature." If the WGT624 has the "client isolation" capability you mention, there is no reference to it in the configuration GUI.

I had forgotten about the DHCP query tool, I'll give that a shot.

Thanks!

Reply to
Jonathan

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