Network Confusion - Please Help

[ashburnham]

Hi all,

Looking for a bit of expert advice for a network novice (excuse my use of incorrect terminology throughout).

I have a whole host of wires and boxes all connected up into what I believe is known as a star network. There are several Windows PCs, 2 printers and a wireless router all wired directly into a central area where there is a Soho Routefinder (hub?) [example].

This is all great as all the individual PCs have internet access, can access the file server, can print on either printer and can even share files directly with each other. I was not involved with the set up of this and don't want to muck about with it either.

So my question (finally)... I now have a laptop which I have managed to connect to the wireless router to gain internet access with no problem. I now want to access the rest of the network (via this wireless method) so I too can use the printers, share files, etc but have no idea where to start.

I have read a few different forum posts and am really getting nowhere so hoped that someone can guide me through.

Thanks in advance

 

[office politics]

what's the ip addressing look like? need ip addresses and default gateways

can you ping other machines on the network? are all nodes on the same network?

 

[ashburnham]

All nodes are on the same network (exactly like the example picture in first post).

My laptop is 192.168.1.2
Laptop default gateway is 192.168.1.1 (which is the wireless router)

One of the PCs is 192.168.10.137
PCs default gateway is 192.168.10.249 (which I guess is the Soho Routefinder)

One of the printers is 192.168.10.180

I cannot ping the PCs or Printers from my laptop (time out error).

 

[mikesgroovin]

Can you log into the wireless device using the 192.168.1.x address?

If you can, see what external address it has. Might be referred to as a "WAN" address. See if it has a 192.168.10.x address for the WAN address.
Just sounds like it might need a static route setup between the 2 segments (10.x and 1.x)

 

[ashburnham]

I can log into the wireless router at 192.168.1.1 no problem

Once in I can't find anything saying WAN address but there is a section under Advanced --> Static Routing which has 2 entries. One has our ISP name (so assume this is broadband connection) other has following info:

Connection: LAN group 1
Destination IP: 192.168.10.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.222

There is also a Mask and Metric entry but don't know if this is relevant.

I can add others in this area but don't know what IP / Gateway I should be entering if that is the case.

Any ideas?

 

[office politics]

run a tracert for us. this is going to show how the laptop is connecting to the inet.

tracert http://www.yahoo.com

I would think that 192.168.1.222 is used by a port on the wireless router.
It seems to me that the route that is listed should allow the laptop to connect.
There may be a firewall rule blocking access.


If the soho routefinder was a hub it wouldn't have an ip address.
SOHO RouteFinder VPN Data Sheet: SOHO Internet Security Appliance <- Is this the device?

 

[ashburnham]

run a tracert for us. this is going to show how the laptop is connecting to the inet.

Not sure how the tracert will help me connect to a local network as the laptop immediately goes from the router at 192.168.1.1 to an external address of 217.XXX.XXX.XXX?

If the soho routefinder was a hub it wouldn't have an ip address.
SOHO RouteFinder VPN Data Sheet: SOHO Internet Security Appliance <- Is this the device?

Yes, this is the device.

 

[mikesgroovin]

Sometimes I really hate asking the question "why" because, more often than not, your setup is your setup and it is probably in our best interest to just work with what you have and how you have it.

But, in this case, I wanted to just offer up another way to get what you need done.

First though, I need to ask if there is a specific reason why you need to have the wireless router connected to to original LAN the way that it is already setup. Currently, you have the second router (wireless one) connected as a 2nd segment that has it's own broadcast domain. Sometimes there might be a specific reason for this setup... like, an application that only the clients connecting to the wireless router use... that needs it's own broadcast domain for whatever reason. But, aside from that, is there any other reason that you can think of why that wireless router needs to be setup the way that it is?

If not, you could turn off DHCP on the wireless device and then connect the wireless device via the one of the LAN ports instead of the WAN port. You would be, more or less, eliminating the 2nd segment and the routing functionality of the wireless router and basically turning it into a wireless access point.

Just a thought ...

In addition to what office politics said, I agree that the static router setup would allow access. Sometimes those smaller routers are funny and they need a 0.0.0.0 static route setup to basically say "Talk to everyone behind this infernal device" hehehe.

Anyway, if it's not possible to use the wireless device as an access point, fine... there are other methods to get the 2 network segments talking... but it would be a tiny bit easier to get future segment 2 devices (wireless) to talk to to your original segment.

 

[ashburnham]

The answer to your "why" question is because the whole network has been installed by a "professional" network installation company and at the time of installation, the only reason for the wireless router was for my laptop to access the internet.

Yes, the other PCs access the internet through this same router (albeit via wired access), but I guess it was put outside the original LAN for added security. If anyone did access the wireless router from outside our office, all they would have access to is the internet - big deal - as opposed to having access to our LAN where there is secure information

Personally I don't really want to muck about with moving the wireless router about. It's such a funny little system and access to wiring is an absolute nightmare but the biggest reason is that it works!

Trying to look for a solution that just involves changing settings in either the wireless router and/or the Soho Routefinder (if this is possible???) or any other way but leaving the existing hardware setup in place.

 

[kmote]

The first thing I would try is your subnet mask. I would guess it is 255.255.255.0 right now. Change that to 255.255.0.0 and give it another go, also some routers allow doing a ping from them (most likely it has a web configuration page try looking in there maybe something like diagnostics).