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Kyle Dreaden · Aug 2, 2005, 12:59 AM

Hey everyone.

I've got two mac's in the house now, one of which is a new Mac Mini that I got on end of life discount at the apple store for 350 bucks. I'm trying to give it to my dad who desperately needs to get away from his eight year old PC by Wednesday but I'm having a problem:

It didn't come with airport and my home's network is all wireless. I have two Linksys Wireless Bridges (WET11) sitting around left over from my old PCs that I wanted to try. Well, low and behold as soon as I connected them and tried to log into the web-based setup, it went to hell. My network configuration gives me the "yellow" orb on my Built-in Ethernet saying it's connected but it has a self-assigned IP address. Shouldn't this thing require little or no setup before the Web-Based setup?

Any suggestions? Thanks everyone.

Nivag · Aug 2, 2005, 09:05 AM

not much help to you, but i tried the other day to get the WET54G, which is the one up from the WET11, to work with a Mac and had to give up. Apparently it needed a firmware update to work. the only problem was you need a PC to apply the firmware - not something i own.
sorry for not helping :/

sixandout · Aug 2, 2005, 09:18 AM

i have the wet54g also. had a crazy time getting it to working in the first place. normally you set it up in 10 minutes, but you have to set it up the linksys way or nothing works. it took me hours or doing the same crap over and over, and for some reason it finally worked. i have to say all my other wireless stuff is linksys, but the bridge sucked so bad. i was swearing at the bridge, i removed all forms of encryption etc... was just going to send it back to the store, but since it was to late i just kept trying over and over. i think some people say that with wep you have to get lucky with that type of encryption to make it work. i think i also shredded the dumb poster that was the supposed quick install poster. also linksys tech support was worthless. you may have to just try another bridge besides linksys.

Kyle Dreaden · Aug 2, 2005, 10:18 AM

Thanks guys -

I have access to a PC so I'll give the firmware upgrade a shot. Anyone else hate these bridges?

ghporter · Aug 2, 2005, 11:14 AM

I don't hate bridges per se, just bridges that need such extensive and exact setup procedures. As noted above these things SHOULD be a snap to set up, but they tend not to be for some reason. And while I usually recommend against updating firmware "just because," this looks like a bigger problem than simply resetting the thing would cure.

Supposedly just about all consumer network equipment is configured from the factory to work via DHCP to allow the user to simply log into their browser-based configuration screens and do what's needed. Unfortunately not all manufacturers tell you that you should ALWAYS connect to these things via cable to configure them. Nor do they tell you that boxes with browser-based configuration systems are just fine with ANY platform, Mac, Windows, Linux, "Fred's OS," or whatever. If it has a compliant browser, any computer can set these things up.

Kyle Dreaden · Aug 2, 2005, 09:48 PM

Just to give everyone an update, I've got everything working now. I'm coming to you from my new Mac Mini.

For anyone wondering, here is how I got it all up and running.

1.) In OS X's network config, I set the bridges IP (192.168.1.225) as the gateway. At that point, it allowed me to log into my web-based config. Then, after messing with the configuration for a good amount of time, I realized that for whatever reason, the Linksys gear isn't able to work with my Airport's 10.0.1.x Addressing, so I changed my Airport over to 192.168.1.x addressing.

Tada! All up and running.

Thanks for all the help guys.

Kyle

Nivag · Aug 4, 2005, 04:50 AM

are you using a password to connect to your airport?

also what firmware version is the WET11 using? just out of curiosity

John Strung · Aug 4, 2005, 09:43 AM

Kyle is right. The trick to getting any sort of network running is to ensure that all devices are on the same subnet. So either change the subnet that the Airport is using or change the default IP of the Linksys.

You can in fact update the LInkSys firmware from a Mac following the instructions here:

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/...lp_pg2.htm#Mac

and the MacTFTP client here:

http://www.mactechnologies.com/pages/downld.html

ghporter · Aug 4, 2005, 10:31 AM

You don't even need MacTFTP in most cases with newer (less than two or three year old) equipment, because their browser interfaces offer an option to do it through the interface.

But yes, all on the same subnet first, then everything else should fall together by itself pretty nicely.

After that, work on security. NEVER ignore security.