Odd Routing Problem?

This will be my second post in a very long time. But, since I've rediscovered this place I thought I'd see what help I can get for this very strange problem I'm having.

Here's the issue. The house I rent with my 2 friends has a very geektastic network.

Our cable modem is attacted to our 802.11g Router (Linksys WRT54G flashed with Alchemy). Most computers connect to this directly, but our server farm lives in a room by itself with physical LAN through a 16 port switch connected to a Linksys WiFi Bridge (WET54G).

The issue:

My slackware box that I just spent so much time making all wonderful in its *nix-iness can be sshd to from the outside world (aka work) and from every computer on the network except ONE. This one happens to be my laptop.

As near as I can tell the laptop has identical networking set up to the other WinXP Pro boxes that connect through the WiFi.

From the linux box I can ping every other computer as well, but for my laptop IP i get a "destination host unreachable" error.

I've looked at so many things on my laptop I can't even think of what I could be missing.

I've tried shutting of the windows firewall. I've tried resetting the TCP/IP stack from netsh, I've repaired the network connection. I've tried ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew until my fingers got tired.

Where else should I look. Oh, and the router's everything looks normal to me.

Give me a hint people. I'm sure it's obvious and that is the reason why I've been staring at it and can't see it.

TY,
Dhej

Flat network? Ie, all on same IP network space ?

Can your laptop ping anything else on the network?

Looked at your arp table?

Yup, flat network. All in 192.168.0.0/24. There aren't any configs for the bridge other than getting onto the WiFi network, so can't tell much about its config.

Laptop can ping some things, but not all. Like it can ping the box I'm typing on, which is WinXP and on the switch with the Slack box.

Checking the arp is a good idea.

Running into issues with the busybox tools available.

So far, doesn't look like arp table is screwy, but I'll confirm in the AM. Gonna go to bed.

Thanks for the ideas on where to look. If all else fails I'll reflash the router to default and reconfigure. It was pretending to be a bridge before it became the router, so it could have stale configs lurking deep inside where I don't know to look for them.

Dhej

Ok, since your laptop is having issues pinging around, I'd start there. The stuff it can ping, is it all on the same switch/bridge? What about the stuff that it can't ping? What about other devices connected to the same device as your laptop, can they ping the stuff that your laptop can't? If they can, then I'd look more closely at the laptop, if they can't, look closely at the bridge/switches. If its the network gear, try switching cables and/or ports and/or network cards (wireless or ethernet). If its on the laptop, try adding a static arp entry for the unix system, see if that makes a difference...

Anyway, that's a few ideas off the top of my head for now...

Neb,

Thanks for the help...

I've established it is DEFINITELY the laptop.

It works wired, and kinda works wireless. I've managed to get it to ssh into the linux box by making a static route to it. arping from the linux box to the laptop fails. ip neigh show shows the laptop as FAILED, even with a static arp entry for the linux box on the laptop.

The laptop has route configured for 192.168.0.0:

Code:

---

Desination  Netmask      Gateway      Interface    Metric
192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.10 192.168.0.10 25

---

192.168.0.10 being the laptops IP. I've tried deleting that entry and creating a new on, but it won't let me. I've tried changing it, but it says it doesn't exist, and I've tried adding another route with the same name, but the ghostly one takes precedence.

So, if you have any more ideas, that'd be great. If not, thanks for the ideas.

Dhej

That is a normal route and is only reflective that your NIC is configured for that network and that it is acting as the gateway to it...have the same thing on mine:

Quote:

---

192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.100 192.168.0.100 20

---

If it is working wired and only sort of working wireless, I'd probably approach it by using the wired connection to download the latest drivers for the wireless device, then delete the wireless card (control panel->system->hardware->device manager), removing the drivers (if they aren't default, being extra sure to remove any latent files), cleaning up the registry trying to remove references to the driver (be careful, before you do this you might want to make a restore point, very easy to screw things up here). After getting all that done, reboot and when the XP hardware wizard finds new hardware, skip it and go to the drivers you downloaded earlier.

My guess is its probably your wireless card/drivers since you are having basic connection problems. I am assuming that you have good signal strength the entire time ?

What is the make of your laptop???


Does it have an Intel wireless adapter....Evteng.exe is a non-essential service..on another forum I just read where some Toshiba's were experiencing a problem with connectivity, and the workaround is to keep this service from running, apparently this Evteng.exe breaks the connection...just a thought... ;)

Thanks for the suggestions guys, but we've just established that it is definately either the router or the bridge. I'm hoping it is the router, since the WET54G doesn't have many configuration options.

The way I can say with confidence it isn't my computer is that another computer on our network is having similar issues.

I didn't realize that my roommate's computers had been running in Linux all weekend, so when I said all the other WinXP Pro boxes connected properly, I was wrong. Everything except WinXP Pro boxes work, but only Wireless LAN to Wired LAN connections die. Wireless to Internet works fine. Wireless to Wireless works fine. Wired to Wired works fine. Only with WinXP Pro. WinXP Home works correctly. Linux works correctly.

I'm guessing that XP Pro has some kind of setting that it doesn't like something about the bridged packets. Especially since you can circumvent the problem by adding a static route to the routing table of the XP Pro box (I successfully connected to the Linux box after making the appropriate route with route -s 192.168.0.8 MASK 255.255.255.255 192.168.0.1).

It could be a legacy from not resetting the routers configurations to default before replacing our old netgear router with it. Before the Linksys WRT54G router was acting as a bridge with out Netgear router. Then when we purchased the WET54G bridge the Netgear was replaced with the WRT54G. I'm thinking some of the settings might be holderovers from the router's repurposing.

I'm going to reflash the WRT54G to the newest Linksys ROM instead of the Sveasoft Alchemy ROM. Hopefully the two Linksys products will automatically play together nicely.

So, I'll post after work tomorrow after I reflash the router and get things re-established.

Thanks again!
Dhej

Welp. That's done it.

I reflashed the router and everything came back the way it should have been from the beginning.

So, the lesson learned:

When repurposing consumer networking kit for tasks it isn't meant for (i.e., using a router for a bridge), remember to reflash it when you use it for its intended purpose.

Apparently, the Alchemy ROM from Sveasoft hides a very important option, or I completely overlooked it. Linksys has a very convenient setting called "AP Isolation" on the WRT54G. As you might imagine, it basically creates a VLAN for every wirelessly connected computer. These VLANs don't easily route to each other. During the reconfiguration process, I noticed that setting and made sure it was switched to "Off". The problem is no more.

I'm half tempted to reflash to the Alchemy ROM to see if that setting is an option or not, so that I can know if I'm stupid.

So, if anyone has experience with the Alchemy ROM go to your advanced wireless settings and see if there is something that would lead you to believe that I'm an idiot. My wager is not, since the Alchemy ROM has all of those advanced VLAN configuration screens (all of which I'm pretty sure were configured to make our network a single VLAN).

So, thanks a lot guys. You gave me a lot of places to look that I just wasn't catching, and lead me away from dead ends.

Peace,
Dhej