On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 2:31 PM, dragorn <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 01:47:03PM -0500, Jack Chastain wrote: > > Today (and probably for at least a year or so now), the unit indicates it > > has a WiFi section active (on front panel) but I do not have a signal > > present. I used WiFi Analyzer on my phone to check. My main office signal > > is present at -90+ db but other than a few other neighborhood signals, > > nothing is there. > > > > I apparently cannot access the router either. I removed all other network > > cables leaving only the Linux system it is normally supporting via wired > > conenction. I rebooted everything - I cannot access the router. I used > both > > 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.100. Without the supporting FiOS router though, > > the Linux system does not see any network at all and obtains no address > > itself. (I pretty much expected this as the Netgear was set up to be > > an extension, so it can only get an address from the FiOS system). > > > > So - I thought I would pop it out to the folks who know the most about > > these things. Anyone ever played with one of these? I am about to do a > full > > factory reset on it and try to start over, at least trying to get into > the > > router itself, but I recall having a pretty tough time initially, so I > > figured I would ask first. > > As an extension, do you mean it's a second AP with the same SSID? Or > is it set up as some sort of wacky repeater? You want the former - > namely, same ssid, same crypto, non-router 'bridge' mode, different > channel. > Good question and I THINK this is right - Same SSID, basically working as an "extension" of what I have on the FiOS box downstairs. It is a (distant) second AP. At one point originally, I recall having a second SSID, but during configuration, we realised that wasn't really what we wanted - so we converted it to be the same SSID. It seemed to work properly back when we really didn't use t for much. Once we really needed it, it seems the radio had gone away, as has the access, so I can't be 100% sure - but I believe a "same SSID" system is what I want. I vaguely recall that we also may have set non-interfering channels as well, rather than allowing the unit to auto-select. These memories are all close to two years old though. I don't work with this stuff more than very occasionally and I don't have more than a vague notion of what I am talking about. > As far as the rest - this happens a lot with crappy wi-fi consumer > gear. It's a real pain. A lot of them simply don't have the ram to > manage connection and such, this usually shows up as a bigger problem > when it's in router mode instead of AP bridge mode, but... > Certainly agree, but my key issue with this was what I really hope was a mis-statement, but seems to match up pretty well with what I remember the time frame being - that being the statement by that contact at NetGear that "the reason your WiFi is not working is your support contract has ended." - I truly hope this is completely wrong, but the time frame is just so ... synchronous. > Factory resetting is probably a good plan, it can't hurt. You should > be able to reset it into a router mode, then connect to it via wired, > and reconfigure it. > Going to go try that in a few moments. Finally. > > You may have better luck in the long run getting a new AP entirely - > things are getting a lot better. I've had good luck with the > WNDR3800, it's relatively cheap on amazon, runs openwrt like a champ, > and can support USB drives and such as well - even running it as a > bridge you may find it useful in other capacities (like throwing a few > USB disks on it for backups, etc). > > Sorry it's hard to be more exact with diagnostics - a lot of the > older (and current cheapest) gear tends to poo itself fairly regularly > and there's not much by way of debugging you can do. It's not too > unusual to get it wedged in some funky state - most of the smaller > stuff has dropped from linux to vxworks, halved the ram in the unit, > dropped CPU quality, etc. It's not unusual to ship them with 2 meg of > ram and 4 meg of storage. Way too underpowered for modern loads. > No worries - it was a shotgun question anyway. The unit was cheap and I didn't expect a lot - and to have it actually work at all was amazing. It was more the tech response to my question - and the need to purchase a contract for service that was more than twice the cost of the system that really put me off. All the info received has been useful - I am going to go mess with things now on the existing unit, and hopefully play with an old WRT54G after the meeting and through Paul's spare unit. JC -- Eschew obfuscation and pompous prolixity. Light a man a fire, he is warm for the night. Light a man afire, he is warm for the rest of his life.
_______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College Dec 5 - SysAdmin Panel Jan 9 - High Performance Computing Feb 6 - Raspberry Pi
