I have ATT broadband cable internet with a Motorola Surboard modem and a dynamic IP address. I have a three computer wireless Airport home network. When the ATT people installed my broadband, they set it up so that the Airport base station acts as a passive bridge. The cable modem assigns the IP addresses to the computers so that I can share one IP address for access to the internet. I have IP addresses with the format "12.254.XXX.X". This works fine for internet sharing and connecting with Nortel contivity VPN software to my company computers. But I can't get USB printer sharing to work. The printer shows up in the printer list of the other computers with strange appendages to the name. There is a "!" next to the name of the printer and it will not work.
However, if I reconfigure my Airport base station to assign IP numbers and do the DHCP thing, I am able to do printer sharing very well and I can share the single IP for internet access. However, I can't connect with my VPN software. The assigned IP numbers are in the form of "10.0.0.2", "10.0.0.4", etc.
I have the impression that my internet connection is faster when I let the cable modem handle the IP addresses (but this may just be a subjective thing).
In essence, my question is: what is the proper (best) way to set up a wireless network when you have two devices (Airport base station and cable modem) that are able to do the DHCP and NAT functions? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
John
Top
