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Need help with a complicated wireless setup

Last response: in Wireless Networking
July 7, 2005 5:26:06 AM

First let me describe my setup.
On the second floor I have two computers in the same room (computer A & B). These two computers are connected (wired) to the D-Link DGL-4300 Wireless Gaming Router. A DSL modem is also connected to the router. These two computers are both running Win XP Pro, they can both "see" each other and can both connect to the internet.

On the first floor I have a computer and a PS2 in the same room (computer C). They are connected to the D-Link DI-604 Ethernet Broadband Router. I also have the D-Link DGL-3420 Gaming Adaptor connected to the router as a WAN connection. I would like to use the DGL-3420 to wirelessly connect computer C and the PS2 to the internet and to computers A&B.

The problem I am having is that computer C and the PS2 can't connect to the internet or to computers A&B. In fact, I can't even get to the DGL-3420 configuration screen ( from computer C.

If I connect the DGL-3420 directly to computer C, I can get to the internet and I can "see" computers A&B.

I would like to be able to share the internet connection with both computer C and the PS2, how can I accomplish this?

Thank you for any help you can provide,

July 7, 2005 4:12:02 PM

The gaming adapter would be a LAN connection. Connect it to a LAN port on the second routers switch. Your not going to use any of the routing functionality of that device. So you completely bypass the WAN port and don't forget to disable DHCP on that box as well. It is merely a switch at this point.

The 3420 will bridge to the Parent AP, your DGL-4300. The problem your probably going to run into is most of these gaming bridges only allow one mac address to pass data, meaning your only going to get one IP assigned by the parent AP/Router. You could try to use XP's bridging functionality if this is the case but I'd be really suprised if it worked. Might though.
July 10, 2005 10:23:32 PM

Partial success!

I tried what you suggested and I can now get computer C to connect to the internet and I can see drive shares on computers A & B. Computers A & B can also see drive shares on computer C.

There are two things that are not working:
1. I cannot get the PS2 to connect to the internet. I tried both automatic and manual configuration.
2. I use a VNC program (TightVNC or UltraVNC) to remotely administrate the computers. Using VNC I get the following connections:
computer A can see B but not C
computer B can see B but not C
computer C can see both computers A & B
This is very frustrating since I use computer A to "see" all of the other computers.

Can anyone help out with these remaining problems?

It seems that these DLink wireless products are not living up to what they should be able to accomplish. I get frequent wireless disconnects and a constant signal strength of about 20, limiting transfer speeds to about 8 mbps instead of 108 mbps.

Given the setup I have, and the fact that I would like to have wireless connectivity around 100 mbps, can anyone suggest a better replacement?

Thank you again for all the help,

July 10, 2005 10:39:42 PM

"I would like to have wireless connectivity around 100 mbps, can anyone suggest a better replacement?"

Well you'll be waiting several years before you see 100Mbps wireless. My guess would be in the neighborhood of 5 years though I suppose it could be less if the technology REALLY accelerates in the next couple of years. You will see high end signalling rates, the channel bonding 108Mbps solutions for instance (Marketing at it's finest by the way) but real world throughput won't crest 100Mb for quite awhile.

Many or perhaps even most budget workgroup bridges (the wireless "gaming" adapters) typically allow one MAC address to get traffic through. Check your manual but if yours has that limitation you'll only get one device through it to the rest of the LAN and WAN.

As far as VNC, if you can get to network resources on all your machines then connectivity is fine. I'd use the IP of the remote machines via VNC instead of the NetBIOS name. If that doesn't work you have a firewall issue.