# Problem: Emac> Wet54g> wifi> pc network



## opetero (May 17, 2006)

I've tried all the suggestions I could find here without any luck.

I'm a PC guy with little mac knowledge. I live in a remote area and am sharing my satellite internet connection with a few neighbors. Everyone on the network is pc except one person with a 1.25ghz 256mb ram emac running OSX 10.3.9.

The router is a Linksys WRTP54G (voip). To get wifi coverage it requires external antennas. In order to get an external antenna capability for the emac I used a Linksys Wet54G bridge into the ethernet port.

The router is set as a DHCP server and assigns addresses on the network. This works 100% with the emac when connected via cable. When I first installed the wet54g instead of the cable it automatically configured the connection correctly and worked for about a day. The wifi signal is at 100%.

A day later the emac froze and lost connection. I tried a bunch of different configurations. DHCP, DHCP with manual address, Manual address, reset wet54g, reset router, run setup up wet54g, upgrade firmware for wet54g (1.08), restart all components. Nothing got the connection live. Switching back to cable was 100% ok.

Symptoms: I could get into the router using the IP address so the wifi link was ok. I could get into wet54g ok using IP. I could not ping onto the web either ip or domain.

In network settings on the mac when configuring for DHCP it would pick a local address in the 169.* range not the router range of 168.* meaning it was not getting the DHCP assignment from the router. Setting the address manually including the gateway ip and DNS servers had no effect. I could access the router but not anywhere on the web.

I took the wet54g and hooked it into a pc, it would not access the web. Same story, DHCP assignments didn't get through it. I tried a bunch of ways to reset it until finally it acted normally again.

Worked fine on the pc for a day, put it back on the emac and it worked normally for about 3 days then same problem. I am currently trying to get it working on a pc again.

Any ideas?

Thanks


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## nixgeek (May 18, 2006)

Out of curiosity, you mentioned that you were distributing 168.x.x.x IP addresses through DHCP.  You are aware that 168.x.x.x falls withing the range of *public IP addressing*, meaning you're actually using live IPs used by others on the Internet cloud!  The only *private *ranges for Class A, B, and C addresses can be found at the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_IP_address

the 169.254.x.x address is an APIPA address that is given out when a DHCP request hasn't been answered by any available DHCP servers.  The computer assigns itself this address when this happens.


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## opetero (May 18, 2006)

nixgeek said:
			
		

> Out of curiosity, you mentioned that you were distributing 168.x.x.x IP addresses through DHCP.  You are aware that 168.x.x.x falls withing the range of *public IP addressing*, meaning you're actually using live IPs used by others on the Internet cloud!  The only *private *ranges for Class A, B, and C addresses can be found at the link below:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_IP_address
> 
> the 169.254.x.x address is an APIPA address that is given out when a DHCP request hasn't been answered by any available DHCP servers.  The computer assigns itself this address when this happens.



 you are right, I meant to write 192.168.*.*

It took me about 2 hours on the pc trying everything from multiple resets, powerdowns and setups until I finally got the wet54g to work again. Before this even when addressed correctly manually and windows saying it was functioning normally I could not browse into it or access the internet.

It has been working fine since then on the pc.

It seems some internal memory gets corrupted after being connected to the mac for a period of time. When this happens on the mac the network diagnostics still gives a green light and says it is connected to the web. however the web is non-functional. It is not just a DNS issue as I have unsuccesfully tried browsing to ip addresses instead of domain names after this occurs. The network is not fully down as I can still browse to the router using the IP.

All other computers on the network are stable.

I tried resetting the router after the problem occurs without any effect. All other computers still had normal access.

It's a pain in the butt as it takes about 2 weeks to get replacement gear to here. Any suggestions for other solutions that allow for connecting an external antenna? There are 2 houses in the way. 

Anyone tried any powerline networking products with the emac? The Asoka products claim a range of 1500ft.


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