[CALUG] asus wifi

[John Alan Hastings]

Walt,

The topology of your network environment is, well, not clear.  I would
start by trying to get a table of what and who each node is.  ifconfig
is a good place to start, (and you are correct, the mac address listed
by ifconfig is that of your card).  Your router will probably have six
mac addresses, one for each wired port, and one for the wireless.

Next, try to scope out the networks.  The 192.168.x.x address range has
room for 65,534 nodes (corresponding to a netmask of 255.255.0.0) but
is usually used as 254 nets, each with a netmask of 255.255.255.0.  Very
typically, each router will glom the network 192.168.1.0, netmask
255.255.255.0, and will assume the ip address 192.168.1.1 on that net.
If you have several approximately co-located wireless routers, and each
has assumed that they own 192.168.1.x, you have a collision between ip
addresses.  Also usually they will be acting as DHCP address providers,
again without coordination.

I would suggest drawing a picture clearly identifying the individual
networks ( ip and netmask ) and all of the hosts ( mac and ip address
(static or DHCP) ) and all of the bridges/routers.

I do not have an Asus WL-520, I have a venerable WRT-54G which looks
pretty much the same (internals aside).  My wired/wireless net is
192.168.1.x netmask 255.255.255.0, and is DHCP (the four wired ports
are available but unused currently).  The Wan port is a second net,
(192.168.2.x netmask 255.255.255.0 with only two hosts: my router and
the Verizon router which has its wireless disabled.  (If you are curious
why this bizarre arrangement, it is because I wanted WPA/AES and the
Verizon router would only give me WEP).

The next question is why do you want to connect to the foreign routers?
 (And I assume that this is with the owner's permission).  If you just
want to have individual hosts connect on an occasional basis, it would
be a good idea to have your local network ip address such that it does
not conflict with any possible other network, although I do not know if
this is necessary.  Use iwconfig or the desktop wireless manager to
connect with the router you want.

On the other hand, if you are trying to use the wireless of your router
as a wan port, that is to get to the internet through your wireless and
then through your neighbor's, I think you would have to configure the
routing tables in your router (not in your local host).  I do not know
if the firmware of the router is willing to do that.

Alan.

Walt Smith wrote:
> hi all, 
> 
> to recap,  I have an Asus wifi I'd like to  connect to
> a Fedora-12 PC.  I use a dialup connection normally,
> but there is an open wifi close by I'd like to use occassionally.
> In all the following, correct me where necessary.
> 
> I'm keeping the present firmware on the ASUS.  Aside, I see the
> firmware is GPL code, but I'm not installing the software by the
> name dd-wrt.  A little research shows that DD-WRT apparently
> has other features such as being able to telnet or ssh into the router.
> 
> The ASUS WL-520-GC has a WAN, 4-LANS and antenna.
> It's apparently a router, not a switch.
> 
> I'm not connecting the WAN.  I want to connect a desktop to the LAN
> and let the antenna go elsewhere.  I can solidly connect to the ASUS
> using the LAN over eth1 using both ifconfig/route, and 
> System-Config-Manager.  (A little more education sems to have
> removed  Previous Problems ).  I see that I'm not supposed to use
> any wlanX or ethx with wireless extensions.  Looking at those
> briefly merely confused the issue.
> The Asus has a web page setup on 192.168.1.1
> 
> problems:
> 
> The Asus seems to have found one station.  And it sticks.
> Refresh doesn't change anything.   This is the part I'm not
> sure about.  Need to prove the RF is working.
> 
> By comparison, use of a linksys wifi card on a XP laptop has confused
> things.  For example, I can see about 10 systems.  Of those, I often
> get 4 or so "open" that have low signal strength, so they "come and go";
> they have different SSID names. However,
> they each have a different IP  at 192, but each has the same MAC
> number ( or physical number ).  This I do not understand.
> 
> Using XP software ( not linksys ), I also cannot tell which channel 
> each connect over.  The setup I believe is "auto".  I wanted the 
> channel numbers most used so I could set the Asus.  Setting the ASUS 
> to one channel allowed it to find one signal.  Curiously enough,
> the XP laptop see's the ASUS as a signal: sig strength is max, it goes
> away when I disconnect the ASUS power, but again, the Physical Number
> of the ASUS seems to be the same.. UNLESS the physcial number is the
> number of my linksys card ?  I've been unable to find a Windows
> control-panel or other status to find the XP linksys mac number.
> 
> To something more specific, if I get a channel to another wifi,
> I see the wifi addresses may be 192.168.1.x or 192.168.2.x.
> I assume that I can see the IP number of the foreign wifi.
> IF it's a 192.168.1.2 or such and my ASUS is 192.168.1.1, it looks
> like a peculiar routing problem.  OTOH, on number that shows up
> ( as IP as well as GW, and DNS server ) is 192.168.2.x.  THis
> looks OK as I should be able to setup a route: 
> 
> ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.10   ( this adds route 192.168.1.0 automatically)
> route add eth1 192.168.1.1 gw 192.168.1.10
> route add eth1 192.168.2.5 gw 192.168.1.1 (Asus)
> route add eth1 default 192.168.2.5
> 
> ( fix precise syntax ).
> 
> So there a are 2 problems:
> Controlling a wifi connection on the ASUS to another wifi.
> getting the packets to flow correctly.
> 
> Am I getting close ?
> 
> 
> Walt.......
> 
>  
> 
> 
>       
> 
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-- 
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
| The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
| least until we've finished building it.
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Alan Hastings
jah1066 at aol.com
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