Re: Wireless Access Point and proxy server setup problem

Thanks Joe. First, you're close -- the PCs all have a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, but the Netgear router and the proxy server have a subnet mask of 255.255.255.252, to limit the number of devices that can share that subnet.

Second, I don't see the FDDI stuff as being an issue -- it's just converting the ethernet to fiber then back, in effect acting as a long cable. And your point about the PCs not being physically connected would make sense except that PCs on the other end of that are not connected physically to the proxy server -- they go through the Netgear router just like the PCs connecting through the AP should but don't.

And as I noted in a reply to Tom Liotta, if I connect a PC to the cable that goes to the AP, that PC can connect to the proxy server and thus the internet.

Another interesting point -- the PC acting as proxy server is also the DHCP server, the *only* DHCP server, and PCs on the other end of the FDDI, which connect to the proxy server through the router and the switch, have no problem getting an IP address assigned, but PCs connecting to the AP -> router do not get an IP address.

Let me emphasize this particular point:

PC --> AP --> router --> switch --> proxy server --> router --> DSL --> internet DOES NOT WORK

but

PC --> router --> switch --> proxy server --> router --> DSL --> internet DOES work

the only difference is removing the AP. What is the AP doing that makes it fail?

*Peter Dow* /
Dow Software Services, Inc.
909 793-9050
pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:pdow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> /



Joe Pluta wrote:

From: Peter Dow (ML)

Hi Peter! I'm not going to reproduce your drawing, but from what I can
tell, everything works exactly as expected.

I'll add a couple of issues. First, I'm going to guess that your masks are
set to 255.255.255.0, which means that the PCs can only see other devices
they are physically connected to which have the same first three values, in
this case 10.0.0.

What this means, in my simple layman's understanding, is that when one of
your PCs wants to talk to another machine, it first checks to see if the
address it is looking for starts with 10.0.0, and if not, it sends the
packet to its gateway, 10.0.0.1.

So, any PC connected to the switch which is also connected to 10.0.0.1 will
work just fine, because any packets for the outside world will get sent to
10.0.0.1, which presumably forwards them on through its other NIC to the
great beyond.

The problem is the PCs that are not physically connected to the 10.0.0.1 PC,
and are instead connected to the Netgear router. The router is 10.1.1.1.
By being on the subnet 10.1.1, that means that none of the PCs can naturally
see it, since they can only talk to 10.0.0. And since the router physically
stands between them and their gateway (10.0.0.1), no packets will ever reach
the outside world.

This is where my meager knowledge sputters out. As I see it, if you really
want everything to go through the proxy, you need to connect both the FDDI
and the WAP to the switch, not to the router. But I don't know anything
about FDDI, so I'm not betting the farm on that particular setup.

Joe