Netgear DG834G as a wireless hub connected to existing ADSL modem

[The late XV105]

Post 2 of 2 ce soir.

I am on holiday (in Czech Republic in the remote chance that it's relevant) and have brought my trusty old Netgear DG834G wireless router with me to give to a friend with two students in their house fighting over the single ethernet cable to their ADSL modem that they also need to run their business.

Unfortunately they have mislaid both their password for connection to ISP and their password to access the admin features on their ADSL modem. Both problems can be solved within a few days but I have been trying to press ahead anyway by connecting the ethernet cable from their ADSL modem to any one of the four ports on the DG834G.

If any of the computers are likewise connected to the DG834G via ethernet, web browsing works fine, but if 802.11 b or g wireless is used, web browsing ceases to work (page not found and PING from CMD fails) even though connection to the router admin page works fine.

I have left both DHCP and NAT "on", and DNS lookup as "use ISP's servers".

Before I change anything, your advice, please.

Many thanks.

[Saab Dastard]

XV105,

If I understand you correctly, you can attach the uplink port of the DG834G wireless router to the ADSL modem, and in this configuration you can attach a PC to one of the 4 switch ports, with the PC able to connect successfully to the internet.

But wireless connections do not work - however, they do connect to the access point, do get an IP address and can ping the router.

Are both wired and wireless connections using DHCP? Can you resolve an internet IP address on a wired connection (e.g. www.bbc.co.uk) and then ping that IP address over wifi? If you get a response then it's a DNS configuration issue. But if both wired and wifi are getting the same info from the DG834G DHCP server I'm damned if I can see why!

Do you have any security settings that prevent certain IP addresses from accessing internet resources through the router? I know on my Linksys I can block local IP addresses from getting to the internet - possibly you can do the same with Netgear.

SD

[The late XV105]

Thanks for the reply, Saab Dastard.

The DG834G only has four ethernet switch ports; no dedicated "uplink" port. I can connect any PC to any of these four ports and the ADSL modem to any of the remaining three ports, in any of the possible combinations, and web browsing works fine. Pinging BBC gives a nippy response time (40ms) and resolves 212.58.251.195 as the IP address.

If I instead try and web browse via wireless with the ADSL modem connected to any of the four switch ports, it fails "page not found". If I however then ping the router at 192.168.0.1 (I have left IP allocation at the defaults), it works. If I then try to connect to the router admin page, that too works. If I try to ping BBC however, either using www.bbc.co.uk (http://www.bbc.co.uk) or the proven IP address 212.58.251.195, it fails.

The router is correctly allocating IP addresses to each connected PC, so DHCP is working; the first PC gets 192.168.0.2 (ipconfig/all), the second .3, and so on, exactly as the defined Netgear rule states.

No security or parental control options are switched on to restrict outbound traffic.

Cheers.

[Agent86]

The 824 is a modem router ...hence the sharing will only share what comes in from the ADSL line...By sticking the output from the ADSL modem into one of the 4 ports you are using the ports as a basic hub ..hence the share via wired is OK. The Wireless is connected internally to the ADSL and not to the wired switch. hence no wireless sharing.

IF either of the users have saved their logon in Outlook (or Express) the utility SIW from http://www.gtopala.com/ will expose any ***** passwords in windoze (see the Eureka tool :) ). You can then use that to configure the 824 as a modem-router and bypass the modem.

[The late XV105]

Thanks, Agent86, but I am still puzzled;

If I share a directory on my PC, it will be visible to any other PC on the internal network regardless of whether my PC, or any other, is connected to the DG834G via wireless or ethernet.

Given that the ADSL line is connected to a third party modem and is then being transmitted via ethernet to the DG834G, I would expect it, too, to be visible regardless of whether I am connected wired or wireless.

A couple of years ago I did exactly this with the DG834G and my BT Home Hub. For reasons irrelevant to this thread I used the Home Hub for internet acces but (via ethernet between the two) the DG834G for wireless connectivity. The only difference I can see compared to the situation I have today was that I used the Home Hub for DHCP allocation of IP address so switched this service off on the DG834G.

BTW - Thanks for the utility link. It doesn't help me today but I have bookmarked it for future use. :ok:

[Saab Dastard]

Agent86,

I don't believe that you are correct. In every wifi device I've come across, the wifi LAN and the built-in switch ports are bridged together.

From the manual, the issue isn't to do with uplink ports:

The ADSL modem router incorporates Auto UplinkTM technology. Each local Ethernet port will automatically sense whether the Ethernet cable plugged into the port should have a ‘normal’ connection such as to a computer or an ‘uplink’ connection such as to a switch or hub. That port
will then configure itself to the correct configuration. This feature also eliminates the need to worry about crossover cables, as Auto Uplink will accommodate either type of cable to make the right connection.
This is borne out by the fact that it works on a wired connection.

What I would do is to check the Netgear site for the most recent firmware and install it - this will probably have the added effect of resetting to factory defaults (thus eliminating any possible security setting that is blocking wifi internet access).

Otherwise I am left scratching my head on this one!

SD

[The late XV105]

Well, Saab Dastard, by mentioning upgrade to new firmware as a byproduct of which settings would be reset, you gave the catalyst to solving the problem because this caused me to remember the "reset pip" on the back panel. After resetting the router this way, during which period it remained powered up and with both my laptop and the ADSL modem connected via ethernet cables, I confirmed that ethernet web browsing still worked.

With ethernet still connected, I then enabled a wireless connection in parallel and used ipconfig/all to check my IP addresses. Hmmm... Not only did I have two addresses but they were in a different range to the router (192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3 versus 192.168.0.2 and 192.168.0.3 that I expected from the Netgear router)

Perhaps, methinks, the ADSL modem *does* have a DHCP server after all, so I connected to the Netgear admin page and did two things: Firstly I changed the Netgear router to an IP address in the same range as the ADSL modem and high enough not to ever likely be allocated by the modem's apparent DHCP server. I chose 192.168.1.100. I left the subnet mask alone at 255 etc. The second thing I did was to switch off DHCP on the router.

After RMB "repair" on the wireless connection of each PC in the house, everyone then had wireless access to the internet.

Yay! :-))

A couple more minutes later I had set up security, so off we went.
Everyone's more than happy and a cold Staropramen Svetly is coming my way shortly. Na zdravi (Cheers!)

Grateful thanks for the help and pointers along the way.

XV105