Bridge building

[/mel/]

In an idle moment (always dangerous) I thought I'd investigate the feature
of XP that allows one to group network interfaces to create a bridge. Partly
because I'll soon have need of a wireless bridge between two LAN segments,
and partly because I have two machines with 400Mb firewire built-in and a
PCI firewire card - it might be nice to get a faster connection for free.

So, with three ethernet NICs, a 54g wireless card, and a firewire card
stuffed into PC [A] off we go -

DCHP is provided by a broadband router to which [A] is connected via
ethernet. All firewalls disabled. UPnP and UPnP SSDP services enabled (took
me a while to figure that one out), all connections on [A] bridged.

[A] gets an IP address from the router. Excellent.

Connect via ethernet to [A]. gets an IP address from the router.
Excellent. Disconnect ethernet.

Connect via firewire to [A]. Oh oh. does not get an IP address.
Damn. Set to use a fixed IP - still it see the rest of the network.
Change cables, change firewire port. Repeat the above on [C] - same result.

So, has anyone here managed to have any success with a) bridges, b)
networking with firewire?

I'm not even going to start detailing the attempts at bridging using
wireless - that's a story in itself and a much longer and tedious one.

It's nice that bridging seems to work when it's all ethernet, but that's the
one scenario that is of no actual use to me.

 

[Steve Winograd [MVP]]

In an idle moment (always dangerous) I thought I'd investigate the feature
of XP that allows one to group network interfaces to create a bridge. Partly
because I'll soon have need of a wireless bridge between two LAN segments,
and partly because I have two machines with 400Mb firewire built-in and a
PCI firewire card - it might be nice to get a faster connection for free.

So, with three ethernet NICs, a 54g wireless card, and a firewire card
stuffed into PC [A] off we go -

DCHP is provided by a broadband router to which [A] is connected via
ethernet. All firewalls disabled. UPnP and UPnP SSDP services enabled (took
me a while to figure that one out), all connections on [A] bridged.

[A] gets an IP address from the router. Excellent.

Connect via ethernet to [A]. gets an IP address from the router.
Excellent. Disconnect ethernet.

Connect via firewire to [A]. Oh oh. does not get an IP address.
Damn. Set to use a fixed IP - still it see the rest of the network.
Change cables, change firewire port. Repeat the above on [C] - same result.

So, has anyone here managed to have any success with a) bridges, b)
networking with firewire?

I'm not even going to start detailing the attempts at bridging using
wireless - that's a story in itself and a much longer and tedious one.

It's nice that bridging seems to work when it's all ethernet, but that's the
one scenario that is of no actual use to me.

This Microsoft Knowledge Base article could help:

Bridge May Not Work With a Non-Promiscuous Mode Network Adapter
http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?id=302348
--
Best Wishes,
Steve Winograd, MS-MVP (Windows Networking)

Please post any reply as a follow-up message in the news group
for everyone to see. I'm sorry, but I don't answer questions
addressed directly to me in E-mail or news groups.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

 

[/mel/]

In an idle moment (always dangerous) I thought I'd investigate the
feature of XP that allows one to group network interfaces to create
a bridge. Partly because I'll soon have need of a wireless bridge
between two LAN segments, and partly because I have two machines
with 400Mb firewire built-in and a PCI firewire card - it might be
nice to get a faster connection for free.

So, with three ethernet NICs, a 54g wireless card, and a firewire
card stuffed into PC [A] off we go -

DCHP is provided by a broadband router to which [A] is connected via
ethernet. All firewalls disabled. UPnP and UPnP SSDP services
enabled (took me a while to figure that one out), all connections on
[A] bridged.

[A] gets an IP address from the router. Excellent.

Connect via ethernet to [A]. gets an IP address from the
router. Excellent. Disconnect ethernet.

Connect via firewire to [A]. Oh oh. does not get an IP
address. Damn. Set to use a fixed IP - still it see the rest of
the network. Change cables, change firewire port. Repeat the above
on [C] - same result.

So, has anyone here managed to have any success with a) bridges, b)
networking with firewire?

I'm not even going to start detailing the attempts at bridging using
wireless - that's a story in itself and a much longer and tedious
one.

It's nice that bridging seems to work when it's all ethernet, but
that's the one scenario that is of no actual use to me.

This Microsoft Knowledge Base article could help:

Bridge May Not Work With a Non-Promiscuous Mode Network Adapter
http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?id=302348

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately it didn't work - neither forcing the 1394
adapter into compatibility mode, nor forcing all of the adapters in the
bridge into compatibility mode. Incidentally the 1394 adapters are using the
standard XP OHCI drivers. The PCI card in the machine I wanted to use as a
bridge is an Adaptec 4300, the motherboards with the built-in 1394 adapters
use VIA and TI chipsets.

I looked for other information from MS but all I could find were articles
along the lines of "this is how to create a bridge, and it all works, isn't
it marvellous".

Oh well. I've wasted too much time on this already, so I've ordered gigabit
ethernet NICs and hubs instead. It would have been nice to have gotten it
working, especially as it seemed to work okay using ethernet.