[waterbuck]

Hi -
I have deduced that my Desktop edition of Retrospect is working irregularly due to difficulty finding one of 2 laptop clients, namely, the wife's Windows XP-running Dell machine. I am worried that my use of Apple Airport ("Snow" 80211b) is somehow the cause of the problem.

The way our network is set up is that that the DSL Modem hooks directly to a 4-port D-Link router which to my understanding, runs NAT. The router is connected via ethernet cable to a Beige G3 Tower sitting in a closet that runs Retrosepect 6.0 each night. The router is also connected to an Airport base station. The airport base station functions as a wireless bridge to 2 laptops, my own G4 AlBook (OS 10.3) and my wife's Dell running Windows XP.

I have set up the Router to assign to assign IP addresses on the LAN via DHCP.
In the Airport control panel I have unchecked the option "distribute IP addresses". My thought was that somehow it would be bad if both the router and the Airport were distributing IP addresses.

When my wife's Dell was running Windows Me and the Retrospect was actually version 5.0, Retrospect quickly located both laptops and ran its backup routine each night.

When my wife had her Windows OS upgraded to Windows XP, I had to upgrade Retrospect to 6.0 (Mac OS), and her client to 6.5 (the latest).

For a month or so it seemed like my AlBook and her Dell Windows machine were both getting backed up, but that it was irregular with the Windows client. Now, Retrospect simply can't find her Windows client despite my replacing her client software. My other machines can ping her Windows laptop directly, and I can mount her hard drive on the desktop of any other machine in the house. The problem seems restricted to Retrospect.

When I directly connected her laptop to the router with an ethernet cable, Retrospect had no problem. Therefore I fear that some unknown setting on the Airport Bridge is the cause of the problem.

I could, for instance, try to set it to distribute IP addresses again. Or I could do some "port mapping" but I am not sure what to map since most online descriptions of portmmapping involve situations where the Airport is also operating as a router, and not just a bridge.

Ultimately I want my wife's Windows machine to be backed up wirelessly. How do I get Retrospect to see it through the apparent barrier of the Airport Bridge?

[waterbuck]

Kind of an update--I got Retrospect to find my Windows client by lucky playing around. I am not sure why this worked.

I went in Windows XP "My Computer"--->"View Network Connection"-->I right-clicked on the icon for the Wirless connection handled by the Windows machine's wirless card, and clicked Properties.

Among the next things I did, one of which must have helped, were these:

*I went to Tab "Wireless Networks" and unclicked "Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings" and tried to get the machine to view the internet through a browser (it could not). Later I opened this tab up again and reclicked "Use Windows to configure my wireless netwrok settings"

*I looked under the same Tab "wireless networks" at the list of "Preferred Networks". On this list I promoted my home wireless network to the top of a list above other wireless networks that seem to reflect the various wireless networks I had hooked onto in hotel lobbies and such. As far as using the internet was concerned it had NEVER mattered that my home network was in the middle of the list, but just to be on the safe side I promoted it up the list to the top.

*I also played around with my Router a bit, turning its DHCP on and off. With DHCP off, no computers in the house could get internet connections.

After all this, my Retrospect computer seems able to find both wirelessly connected laptops. I really don't know what helped.

Anyone else know?