broadband wireless routers

[gramschi]

Guys,
Does anybody have any experience with hooking up a wireless boradband router with the crappy netopia broadband modem supplied by eircom. The router is working fine but it doesnt connect to the net at all. I suspect its compatibility issue and the the fact that those netopia modems are so shit. Anyone have any idea's?

 

[jungle]

Guys,
Does anybody have any experience with hooking up a wireless boradband router with the crappy netopia broadband modem supplied by eircom. The router is working fine but it doesnt connect to the net at all. I suspect its compatibility issue and the the fact that those netopia modems are so shit. Anyone have any idea's?

I'd be interested in hearing this one too.

My parents just got one and are having exactly the same problem.

The LAN connection works fine, but it won't connect over wireless, even though the computer hooks up to the router OK.

Seeing that I'll get asked it over Christmas, it'll be great to turn up with the answer.

 

[thread_killer]

turns out the netopia broadband modem isn't a modulating / demodulating device at all.

it's a router too. that is, it routes packets between two networks. one being your WAN interface, which gets a nice eircom(tm) broadband(tm) IP(tm) address(tm) either statically assigned, or from a pool of addys. the other is your LAN interface, which is (knowing eircom) using the good old unroutable 192.168.1.x/24 class C. (i prefer the ten network myself).

so there's no need to hook the netopia "modem" up to your broadband router, use one or the other. you'll have to configure the new router with some "settings" from the old one before it will work.

to get wireless working you should first try it with all encryption turned off. then make sure both of the wireless devices are using the same ESSID. you will have to, normally, log into the router/switch/wirelessaccesspoint-in-one device and enable wireless. you may have to specify that you want the DHCP server to work on the wireless interface on the "modem". you could always assign one statically to your computer, just use the same network address as the "modem". then your AP should start sending beacon packets and your windows machine should detect this automagically.

failing that,

you should get a wireless network sniffing program and run it to make sure that your wireless Access Point is working. NetStumbler is one for windows that works. Kismet for *nix. there's lots of them for *nix. this program will put your wireless interface into "promiscious" mode, so it will accpet and process all packets, even if they aren't addressed to that node.

when you've established connectivity, then go about turning on encryption. preferable WPA2. don't use WEP. go out and buy a new card for yourself if your current one doesn't support WPA.

 

[gramschi]

turns out the netopia broadband modem isn't a modulating / demodulating device at all.

it's a router too. that is, it routes packets between two networks. one being your WAN interface, which gets a nice eircom(tm) broadband(tm) IP(tm) address(tm) either statically assigned, or from a pool of addys. the other is your LAN interface, which is (knowing eircom) using the good old unroutable 192.168.1.x/24 class C. (i prefer the ten network myself).

so there's no need to hook the netopia "modem" up to your broadband router, use one or the other. you'll have to configure the new router with some "settings" from the old one before it will work.

to get wireless working you should first try it with all encryption turned off. then make sure both of the wireless devices are using the same ESSID. you will have to, normally, log into the router/switch/wirelessaccesspoint-in-one device and enable wireless. you may have to specify that you want the DHCP server to work on the wireless interface on the "modem". you could always assign one statically to your computer, just use the same network address as the "modem". then your AP should start sending beacon packets and your windows machine should detect this automagically.

failing that,

you should get a wireless network sniffing program and run it to make sure that your wireless Access Point is working. NetStumbler is one for windows that works. Kismet for *nix. there's lots of them for *nix. this program will put your wireless interface into "promiscious" mode, so it will accpet and process all packets, even if they aren't addressed to that node.

when you've established connectivity, then go about turning on encryption. preferable WPA2. don't use WEP. go out and buy a new card for yourself if your current one doesn't support WPA.

Thanks for the info. The only problem is I cant use one or the other as the netopia router has no wireless capability (and only 1 ethernet port) and the wireless has no dsl port so i have to use both together.

 

[jungle]

Thanks for the info. The only problem is I cant use one or the other as the netopia router has no wireless capability (and only 1 ethernet port) and the wireless has no dsl port so i have to use both together.

When did you get this?

The folks got theirs from Eircom about 3 weeks ago and it has wireless and 4 LAN ports.

You could try asking Eircom for a different one.

 

[gramschi]

its the non wirelss one they give you. I'm beginning to think this migh not work. The thing is I dont particularly want to use the netoppia suppied wireless router.

 

[gramschi]

That is no issue hook the netopia to the wireless router via ethernet.

Thats what I'm crrently doing but with no luck.

 

[thread_killer]

Thanks for the info. The only problem is I cant use one or the other as the netopia router has no wireless capability (and only 1 ethernet port) and the wireless has no dsl port so i have to use both together.

no problem. you should be plugging the LAN port on the netopia into one of the LAN ports on the wireless accesspoint. is the wireless access point actually a router also? does it have a WAN interface? does it have more than one LAN port? if not, then it is not a switch. you will have to buy a switch, or hub, and plug the routers LAN port into the switch/hub and plug the wireless AP into the switch/hub. hubs are cheaper than switches, but they aren't as clevUr. simply put, what comes in one port is forwarded out all other ports with a hub. a switch on the other hand is "knows" about layer 2 (of the ISOs OSI model) so it will make port forwarding decisions based on MAC addresses. which is cool. basically this dedicates bandwidth to your port. if port 1 transfers a file to a node on port 4, and you are on port 3, you aren't effected by the transfer whereas with a hub you would be ... meh, i'm going off on a tangent here.

Impresive, but, out of curiousity, why do you prefer the 10.x.x.x IP addressing?

a few reasons actually. none of them are profound or anything.

the ten network is non-routable, just like 192.168.

the ten network is a class A, so it has room for about 16 million hosts, unlike the 65 thousand available with the 192.168. (it's a macho thing).

ten network addresses can look like binary numbers and confuse people! for example, 10.10.10.10/8, or 10.10.0.0/8. normally, people ignore the mask because it scares and confuses them, 10.10.0.0 kind of looks like a network address, but it actually contains the network and host address. you can have fun with the private 192 address like this too, if you use a mask of 240, for example, 192.168.1.0/24 is eircoms net address, you can setup a 192.168.1.0/20, which is a host address looks more confusing with the ten network though, i think.

because of the large address space for hosts on the ten network you can hide servers and stuff throughout. it takes significantly longer to scan an address space of 16 million than it would an address space of 254. though you can use the 192.168.x.x/16 and increase the address space to 65K people normally use a /24 and only have room for 254 hosts (can't use 0 and 255, so it's 254 hosts, not 256). you can't get the millions with a class C, you need a class A.

also, i find ten addresses easier to type if you just use 1s and 0s!

never even thought about using the private class B, 172.16.0.0

looks a bit quare.

 

[Wampire]

I have the same problem at home.

- Netopia shitty box from eircom
- Wireless router

Only possible configuration is connect wireless router to netopia box via ethernet - no sausage.

Can connect the wireless router to back of pc (connected to netopia box via usb), but then pc needs to be on.

Plug and Play me arse!

 

[gramschi]

I have the same problem at home.

- Netopia shitty box from eircom
- Wireless router

Only possible configuration is connect wireless router to netopia box via ethernet - no sausage.

Can connect the wireless router to back of pc (connected to netopia box via usb), but then pc needs to be on.

Plug and Play me arse![/QUOTE

I dont quite get that are you saying that the only way it will work is if you connect the router to the PC via the NIc and connect the netopia box tp the PC via USB?