Topic: Help With SME and Wireless Router

[Rich Lazar]

Hey,

     I bought a wireless router for home use.  It is a netgear MR314.  I bought this for home, but now I am at school and I want to use SME for my dhcp server, etc.  I disabled dhcp on the router.  I connected the router to the second nic via with a standard cat 5 cable.  The internet link light did not light on the router.  I tried with a crossover cable.  I got the light to go on, but none of the computers on the network get an ip.  If I use the crossover cable and plug it into any computer, that computer gets an ip and gets on the internet.  So why does the dhcp server not assign ips to the wireless nics.  It is not a configuration issue on the computers.  Does anyone have a solution or workaround?

              Thanks,
                  Richard Lazar

[pat]

Hi there,

don't know if this will help, but here is how I did it with an Orinoco device.

1) DON'T connect the wireless gateway  to the server yet.

2) Connect to your wireless gateway's configuration web page as you normally would. You might have to use a regular ehternet cable for this. If DHCP is disabled on the wireless gateway, configure your TCP/IP settings accordingly.

3) Give the wireless gateway a static IP that is not in your servers (SME) dhcp scope range and enter the rest of the info (default gateway, etc.)

4) Disable the wireless router's DHCP server and whatever settings there might be to posrt forwarding, filtering , NAT , etc...

5) Save its settings, you'll probably have to reboot it after. Do so now.

6) Connect the wireless gatway to your SME server

7) Change your worksatations TCP/IP to dhcp.

That should work... it did for mine. Its basic bridging,

Hope this helps. Good luck!

P@

[Rich Lazar]

Thanks for the info, but it didn't work.  I am going to borrow a friends ap and see if that works.

[Michael Smith]

What you need to do here is plug the SME box's internal-network NIC into the WAN port of the Netgear.  (Probably will need the crossover cable, as you found). You should re-enable DHCP on the router for its clients, and also tell it to pull an IP address on its WAN side.  I would connect a wired PC to the Netgear, as it has a 4-port switch, and make sure it's pulling an IP from the SME server.

So to sum up:  your SME server gets an IP from your campus network on its external interface.  On its internal interface it hands out an IP address to your Netgear router's external interface.  Your Netgear's internal interface hands out IP addresses to its clients, wired & wireless. So you do actually have two DHCP servers operating!  (Three if the college uses DHCP!)

Alternatively you could run the SME box in server-only mode, but I suspect you're wanting to use the SME box as a server on the campus network, correct?

Hope this helps,
Michael

[Rich Lazar]

This did help.  I was able to access the server configuration web page using the dual dhcp server option.  The only problem is my external nic is not working.  How would I get the pcs to see the printer/shared folders from behind the netgear router?


                    Thanks,
                     Richard

[Michael Smith]

Now that's a stumper.  I think you're going to have to use the SME server in server-only mode for that one.  Unless you VPN in ...

[Michael Smith]

After some more reflection I figure you should use the SME server in server-only mode and use portforwarding on the Netgear router for the services you wish to make available to the rest of the network.  That also finesses your "external interface not working" dilemma.

[Rich Lazar]

Thanks for the advice.  This is what I plan to do, except instead of opening up individual ports, I plan to put the sme box in the dmz.

                  Thanks,
                    Rich

[Michael Smith]

Glad I could help.  Good luck!