[beverson]

I had an old Graphite ABS sitting around that was the victim of the bad capacitor problem. My roommate was bored the other day and fixed it � cool, right? We already have a Linksys 802.11b router handling all of our networking in the house (cable modem on the WAN side, a few each of wired and wireless clients on the LAN side at any given time), but because of how our cabling is run there's no great place to put the Linksys to get complete coverage in the house and the backyard (surfing the Web or writing a paper in the hammock or the SkyChairs is glorious). So since my ABS is back up and running now, I figured I'd plug it in to one of the hubs we have downstairs to try and even out our coverage. This is working great for Internet, but not so great with Rendezvous stuff like iTunes music streaming and regular file sharing. When on either the Linksys or the ABS wireless signal, a wireless client can connect to a wired client no problem. But, when trying to connect to another wireless client on the other signal, no dice. For instance, if I'm on the ABS with my iBook, and my roommate is on the Linksys with his iBook, we both have IPs in the same subnet, can see each other in /Network in the Finder and our music libraries pop up as available in each others' iTunes. But, as soon as I go to connect to his file sharing, the Finder puts up a spinning progress bar and eventually times out. Similarly, if I click on his music library in iTunes, it tries for a while to connect and then similarly times out, saying to check firewall software and make sure port XXXX is open. If, back in the Finder, I plug in his IP address in the Connect to Server window, it immediately says that the IP in question is unavailable. iChat is in the same boat � a Rendezvous user on one signal can't see a Rendezvous user on another signal.

We have no firewall software running and no hardware firewall for the LAN. The ABS is configured to get its IP from the Linksys's DHCP server, not to distribute IPs, and to enable AppleTalk to Ethernet bridging � essentially it is supposed to be serving just as a wireless hub. So why can one wireless user on one signal not talk to another wireless user on the other signal, but users on the same signals can talk to each other and wireless users can talk to wired users just fine. Even weirder, why does Rendezvous sometimes see these users on the other wireless signal (iTunes, Finder networking), sometimes not (iChat), and never actually allow connections?

[misc]

Linksys and Apple Base Stations don't play nicely together.

[beverson]

Originally posted by misc:
Linksys and Apple Base Stations don't play nicely together.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me too much. I haven't been happy overall with the Linksys, and if I bought another non-ABS router it would be another brand.

Can you tell me specifically why/how they don't play nicely together? Is there anything I can do to fix this issue, short of buying a new non-ABS router? The latter really isn't an option right now.

[misc]

Originally posted by beverson:
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me too much. I haven't been happy overall with the Linksys, and if I bought another non-ABS router it would be another brand.

Can you tell me specifically why/how they don't play nicely together? Is there anything I can do to fix this issue, short of buying a new non-ABS router? The latter really isn't an option right now.

I knew you were going to ask that . I'm not exactly sure what they don't like about each other. I ended up going out and buying a Siemens router.

[car1son]

I use exactly this setup - a LinkSys BEFW11S4 (v1) and an Apple ABS (Snow in my case) in my home. Seems to work fine for me: (full description and config info)

PS. It may help that the Snow ABS is a dual-ethernet model, meaning I can use the LAN port for the uplink.

[ghporter]

Here's what you do. First, open the Admin Utility and uncheck the "Distribute IP addresses" checkbox. This configures the ABS in bridge mode. Then, select a channel that's three channels away from what you have set in the Linksys box. Now change the network name in the ABS to match (exactly, capitalization included) the SSID setting in the Linksys router.

TA DA!! You've just built an "Extended Service Set," and configured your wireless network for roaming. Congratulate yourself by enjoying your connection at various places throughout your house.

Finally, the stories about AirPort not working with Linksys are mainly from people who never got the terminology translated. You can hear similar stories about AirPort and (insert any other brand here). It's because Apple decided to use its own names for various features and variables when EVERYBODY ELSE uses the same names-all from the 802.11 standard. Sure, some people have real problems, but there's always the possibility of a lemmon in any product. (I'm sure Jaguar goes out of their way to make their customers happy if they wind up with one, but it's bound to happen, even to them!)

[beverson]

Originally posted by GHPorter:
Here's what you do. First, open the Admin Utility and uncheck the "Distribute IP addresses" checkbox. This configures the ABS in bridge mode. Then, select a channel that's three channels away from what you have set in the Linksys box. Now change the network name in the ABS to match (exactly, capitalization included) the SSID setting in the Linksys router.

TA DA!! You've just built an "Extended Service Set," and configured your wireless network for roaming. Congratulate yourself by enjoying your connection at various places throughout your house.

Finally, the stories about AirPort not working with Linksys are mainly from people who never got the terminology translated. You can hear similar stories about AirPort and (insert any other brand here). It's because Apple decided to use its own names for various features and variables when EVERYBODY ELSE uses the same names-all from the 802.11 standard. Sure, some people have real problems, but there's always the possibility of a lemmon in any product. (I'm sure Jaguar goes out of their way to make their customers happy if they wind up with one, but it's bound to happen, even to them!)

Wow �_that's very cool. Thanks GH Porter. The roaming is quite nice, but unfortunately it hasn't solved my original problem: computers on one wireless node can see computers on the other wireless node in Rendezvous-capable apps (iChat, iTunes, filesharing in the Finder), but can't connect to them. I'm watching which node (?) I'm on using Internet Connect and keeping track of the MAC addresses of each node. This has also, at least for the time being, required me to turn off WEP. I couldn't get my machine to pick up the other node when WEP was on before on both (128 bit on the Linksys, 40 bit on the ABS, highest available on each). I maybe could enable it again, haven't tried, but they don't have the same key length available, so I'm not entirely sure how I would do that.

So is there something else I can do to get these to play even more nicely together. Roaming is fantastic, but at this point superfluous. And also, at least for the time being, keeping us from using WEP. I know it's not that secure, but it's about as much security as we need just to keep the neighbors off our network.

[car1son]

Its seems you're getting an IP from the Linksys network properly, and even the UDP broadcast packets sent by Rendezvous are making it to your Airport-connected Mac. But for some reason connection oriented traffic is not working.

If you don't mind trying experiment, why don't you try setting up a DMZ off the airports subnet: assign the Macintosh a static IP address (set Configure pulldown on Network System ppreferences, TCP IP tab, to Manual instead of DHCP), on the Linksys LAN, such as 196.168.1.20. (subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and router 196.168.1.1) Then use the airport administration utility to make that IP address the DMZ.

Then see if that Mac can access other services on the Linksys sub network.