VT1005v, Bridging, DHCP, DNS and Wireless

[Matt Hickman]

I am having problems with DHCP and DNS queries getting through XP
network bridges. I am running XP SP2 on all PCs.

My configuration.
cable (road runner/ Ambit cable modem)
=> motorola vt1005 voice terminal (with NAT and DHCP)
=> desktop (bridging two segments - 3Com 3C905TX and Realtek RTL8139)
=> laptop1 (bridging ethernet - Broadcom 440x - and wireless - Dell WLAN
1350) ad-hoc
=> laptop2 (Trendnet TEW-421PC wireless)

From Laptop2 I can get on the ad-hoc wireless net. I do not get a DHCP
configuration. If I set up with static information, I can ping the
desktop, laptop1, the gateway (vt1005) and I can ping IP addresses on
the Internet. I cannot DNS names resolved. If I run nslookup and specify
an ISP or public DNS server, I get a "no response from server" message.

From Laptop1, I get DHCP and DNS. It appears to working fine.

So, it appears that neither DNS nor DHCP are getting through to laptop2.
But ICMP is. Some traffic is getting through, other traffic is not.

Previous to installing the motorola vt1005, I had this working with the
desktop running ICS and only Laptop1 bridging. So Laptop1 bridging was
working in the previous configuration. And the Desktop bridging is
working for laptop1, for now, anyway.

Any ideas?

Thanks

-Matt Hickman

 

[Matt Hickman]

I am having problems with DHCP and DNS queries getting through XP
network bridges. I am running XP SP2 on all PCs.

Turns out this was the result of a number of problems related
to the installation of SP2 on laptop2. The laptop was loaded down
with spyware and removing it probably munged up some registry
entries that were not restored by a "netsh int ip reset ..."

Anyway, the IPSEC service was failing with a 10106 (event ID 7023
in the event log). A little research led me to WinsockXPFix.exe.
This program fixed the registry entries needed by winsock to allow
the IPSEC service to run which is needed by the DHCP and DNS
clients. This little piece of freeware restored the
registry entries not fixed by netsh. My thanks go to Theron at
Option^Explicit Software Solutions.

IPSEC was working again, but wireless was not. In fact, I couldn't
even ping laptop1 anymore. Both laptop1 and laptop2 would report that
they weee connected to the wireless network, But they wouldn't talk
to each other. The Dell wireless WLAN utility on laptop1 would
show packets sent, but none recieved.

I decided to uninstall and reinstall the TEW-421PC drivers and
utilities according to the Trendware site documentation. Unfortunately,
uninstall errored out and I ended up hacking the register and manually
removing all references to the utility.

Reinstall of the drivers resulted in XP crashing, each time shortly after
boot, because of a thread loop in the driver. This was not working for me,
so I installed the TI drivers that XP thought were correct for the card.

At least the TI drivers did not crash XP. However, I was back to the
point where laptop2 would claim it connected to the network, but
couldn't ping laptop1 (which made a similar claim). What the heck, I
decided to give the Trendware drivers another chance. They worked!

Right now the WLAN utility is reporting that the ad-hoc net between
laptop1 and laptop2 is running at 802.11b (rather than the 802.11g
both cards are suppose to support) and the Trendware utilites either
crash before coming up, or they are suppose to run as a detached
(orphan?)process. But all that is secondary.

--
Matt Hickman
Sometimes is difficult to reach a meeting of minds with machines; they
can be very pig-headed.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
_The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_ c 1966