Wireless Access Point DNS Problem

I'm having a problem with a wireless router here in the office and I thought you guys might be able to help me.

I'm running Windows 2000 Server as a domain server. I've got a dsl router that handles the DHCP list and then routes to a switch that the server and all the workstations feed off of. The problem is I have a wireless router that's also plugged into the switch.

The wireless router is configured with DHCP off and is set to only function as an access point (all routing capabilities off). But the router works on the 192.168.x.x IP pool, while the wired router works on a 10.10.x.x IP pool.

With these settings, the machines feeding from the wireless router are not able to access the internet. I'm guessing this is because the IP is out of the DHCP server's range? Do I change the wireless router's IP address, and if so, what should it be? If I hardcode this into the wireless router config, does it automatically assume this IP address throughout the network? I can't ping the router if I set it up to 10.10.10.100. Why is that? What's the best method to get this thing working?

Thanks so much for your help!

J

You want to try and have everything on the same subnet for communication across the network. Try to change the wireless access point to use the 192.168.x.x subnet. Then make sure that the wireless computers are able to ping the router and can obtain an IP address from it.

My wired (DHCP administered) subnet is 10.10.10.x so I'm guessing you meant to switch the wireless router to this subnet. But how do I do this? I've tried to manually assign the wireless network to a IP address of 10.10.10.100; and afterwhich it said 'point the browser to 10.10.10.100 to access the wireless AP config', but this address apparently didn't assign. Am I taking the wrong route? Should I set the IP adddress of the AP to the address of the WAN? I've been doing a lot of reading, but it seems I'm messing up something somewhere. Whenever I try to assign the AP in the DHCP IP pool it'll give me an error message on the server of an IP conflict. What's goin' on!?

J

Sorry, I did mean the 10.10.10.x subnet - the one which you're already using on your wired network. You should be able to change the IP address of the wireless access point to whatever you want. What router are you using as the wireless access point? Perhaps I'll be able to help more if you give me the model number.

Thanks Edwin, you're always here to help me =)

I'm using a Belkin 802.11 Wireless Cable/DSL Gateway Router (F5D7230-4).

Here's what I'm going to try:

1.Login to the routers web config from default settings
2.Turn of DHCP on wireless router
3.Make the router function as -only- an access point
4.Change the router's IP adddress to 10.10.10.2 (an open IP)
5.Make sure no cables are going into the WAN/Internet slot that's segregated from all the other ethernet ports on the back of the wireless router.
6. For each of the workstations, manually set an open IP_10.10.10.x address (since the wireless DHCP server is off).
7. TEST

Am I leaving anything out? Thanks again!

J

That does seem about right to me. I'll check about the Belkin Router tonight, and see if anything special needs to be configured to get it working for you.

Hey, I got the thing working kind of.

I did everything I had said before and manually assigned each workstation with a specific IP in the 10.10.10.x pool. However, whenever I tried to change the wireless router to a 10.10.10.x IP, it wouldn't take it...maybe some type of interference with the router even though it's now configured to be a workstation. Now, I can't access the wireless router's config at 192.168.2.1. This isn't too much of a problem, but I'd like to be able to access it in the future without a manual reboot. Any ideas?

Another problem I've found is that 'wireless visitors' must manually configure their IP settings when they come to our office. I've found a script that'll do this ...something like netshare blah blah at the command prompt...but this seems awefully inconvenient. How do other companies jump over this hurdle?

Thanks again!

J

For the second problem, can't you just use DHCP? If you've got a connection to the rest of the network, I'd have thought that you should be able to access the dsl router. You need to make sure that DHCP is enabled on this, and then set the clients to automatically obtain an address from it.

With regards your first problem, I'm not too sure. I'm not really surprised you can't access it, because it's on a different subnet to the rest of your network. You really should be able to change its IP address - perhaps you should check with Belkin how to do this, or ask them for support.