[kennedy]

I have an old Appletalk laserprinter that I've been using just fine with OS X for a while now, using a Farallon Ethernet->Appletalk adapter plugged into the LAN with my other three computers.

Now I want to change the network configuration by adding a wireless router outside the "internal" network router:

Internet<-DSLmodem<-wireless router<-internal router

Computers on both LANs/routers talk to the Internet just fine; and the internal machines can see the wireless machines (but not vice-versa). Perfect.

To make the printer available to computers on the wireless router as well as the internal router, I need to put the printer on the wireless router's LAN. However, when I do that, the computers on the internal LAN can no longer see any Appletalk printers available.

Is there any settings, port openings, whatever that I need to set on the internal router to allow Appletalk to work? Or is this just not possible?

(I really have no idea how Appletalk over Ethernet really works... so this may be a ludicrous suggestion, for all I know.)

Thanks.

[tooki]

It won't work. AppleTalk is a different network protocol -- it's not a service running on TCP/IP, it is in place of TCP/IP. Since the routers [unless they are old, rare AppleTalk-aware routers, or an expensive managed router] don't support AppleTalk traffic, they just ignore it, and no amount of TCP/IP settings will change this.

It's not a great idea to have one router nested inside another (since I assume you are talking about consumer-level "routers" that just do NAT). Consider using only the wireless router (with a switch for the wired machines), or just the wired router, and using a WiFi bridge (some of which are AppleTalk-compatible) to give the wireless machines access.

tooki

P.S. Off to the Networking forum this goes...

[aaanorton]

I guess you have a reason for two subnets (?), but in general, there are very few wireless routers that bridge AT from wired to wireless. Besides an A(E)BS, Asante's and possibly some from D-Link are the only ones I know of.

[kennedy]

Originally posted by aaanorton:
I guess you have a reason for two subnets (?), but in general, there are very few wireless routers that bridge AT from wired to wireless. Besides an A(E)BS, Asante's and possibly some from D-Link are the only ones I know of.

Yes, I want to allow my customers access to my internet pipe... but they absolutely cannot have access to my corporate LAN. So, my corporate LAN will remain fully wired and behind a firewall router inside the customer LAN. In that way, my corporate computers can see and access customer (or supplier) computers while they are visiting, but they do not get access to my corporate computers. And I can put printers out on the customer LAN that both my customers can access and my internal employees.

BTW, its working great. And based on my understanding of TCP/IP, I can't imagine how any router could screw that up and still be reasonably functional on the Internet. Its all the same concept.

Note, though, its important that the two routers (the inner and the outer) are not serving the same sets of addresses, which would be the default if you bought matching routers (which is probably common). If you do that, confusion will result... that's why there are specific sets of addresses that are designated for LANs and do not get used on the Internet.

BTW, I've rearranged things such that I can keep my AppleTalk printer on the inner LAN by putting one PC and an IP printer on the outer LAN. Works fine.

Oh, and when I needed to have that PC access a disk on my PowerBook, I simply turned on Airport (such that my PowerBook was both on the inner LAN and the outer LAN) and then the PC connected via the outer LAN address. This did not seem to cause any problems. Pretty sweet setup, actually.

Anyway, thanks for confirming my suspicions... that'll keep me from wasting time with experiments to confirm those suspicions.