|I have a AP350 (that with external antennas) and i'm having some
|dificulties with it.
|
|It is with FirmWare 11.23T. It is the only unit acting as AP in my net. It
|is with ALL the default factory config, except SSID, and IP.
|
|I CAN associate and use it with any PCCARD and PCI (i've tested PCMCIA
|Cisco 340, PCMCIA Cisco 350, PCI350, Linksys PCI, D-Link PCI, etc).
|
|But when i try to use a cheap AP (i've tried D-Link DWL-900AP+ and LinkSYS
|WAP11) in "AP Client" mode, i get some strange results.
|
|The "AP Client" associate with AP350, and from AP350 (and any client
|conected to AP350) i can ping the "AP Client".
|
|BUT when i try to ping AP350 (or any client connected to AP350) from a PC
|conected to the ethernet port of the "AP Client", it doesn't work.
|
|And i got a lot of "Disassociating 'AP Client', reason Not Associated" in
|the AP350 console.
This has been discussed extensively and I think I've done some fairly useful
tests that you might want to review in the archives. I don't think you will
be pleased with the net result which is that it really isn't going to work as
you hope.
Although everybody seems to use the same (obvious) 4-address (i.e., DS-DS)
format for handling third-party traffic through an AP, different vendors
use different proprietary extensions to add the necessary glue. Moreover,
some vendors (like Cisco/Aironet) make a specific marketing distinction between
bridges and access points with the latter disallowing the kind of third-party
traffic from typical AP clients (but allowing Aironet-style multi-client
registrations).
The older AP4800 platform will allow AP client registrations but will not
forward packets for MACs that are clients of the AP client back to the AP
client. The very same hardware running the same firmware but thinking it
is a BR500/BR340 will forward such packets for addresses it has learned from
the AP client back to the AP client. But beware that even though this seems
to work it is really just luck and it will not work in the general case. Once
the MAC address times out in the BRxxx's table it will stop forwarding and,
since the AP client doesn't know how to ask for "all packets with unknown
destination" the way a compatible Aironet bridge would, a silent client of
the AP client will stop seeing its traffic. This can lead to very confusing
situations where things seem to work at first but fail after everybody's ARP
cache is loaded and after there are no transmissions from the AP client's
client for a while.
>From what I've read, the newer AP350 platform is more hostile (or perhaps just
less stable) in the face of "cheap" AP clients and will disassociate from them
or perhaps even crash when seeing multiple MAC addresses.
As usual, the answer to all this is eBay. I've picked up a few Aironet multi-
and universal- clients for ~$160 each in the past week or so. That isn't a
lot more than "cheap" AP clients and you get to manage them with telnet. You
may have to live with the MAC address limitations, but if it is enough for
your application you will have a nice stable platform.
Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com
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