[Wylug-help] Smoothwall and wireless

[Jim Jackson]

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Andrew Teal wrote:


> Hi, I seem to have got to something of a dead end by trying to do two
> things at once with insufficient knowledge ...
>
> Previously I had a free-standing dual-boot PC on an ISDN connection and
> decided to upgrade to broadband. I was reluctant to do this without
> proper defences. I got hold of an old PC, a new BeWAN ADSL PCI modem and
> a Belkin 54g wireless Access point and installed Smoothwall express. I
> installed a matching wireless network card in the pc:
>
> 	[BT] -- Smoothwall -- (with existing network card) -- Access Point
> 								(wireless)
> 							Network card -- PC
>

Each device on the network needs an IP address, all with the same network
number (192.168.2 in this case) and seperate host numbers (4th digit

Each device will also need to know the default gateway, IF it needs to
talk to the Internet. In this case that is the IP address of the
smoothwall box (192.168.2.1)

> Everything seemed ok but I now need to use the admin interface to
> Smoothwall to configure it, and the network isn't working, so I guess
> there's something I don't know. Things I've noticed and/or tried:
>
> The pc talks to the access point, which has a factory set IP of
> 192.168.2.254 and gateway 192.168.2.1. I was able to change the IP to
> 192.168.0.254 to match the default Smoothwall setting 192.168.0.1 (I
> didn't see an option to set the Gateway -- but neither did I look), but
> to no avail. So I changed Smoothwall to 192.168.2.1 (which on writing
> this I see is the same as the AP's Gateway, which can't be right ??).

yes it is. You need to set the PC's default gateway to the same, and give
the PC a 192.168.2.XX IP address.

> I changed the DHCP settings to match, but again with no effect.

Configure the devices with fixed addresses and turn DHCP off, or use it to
hand out fixed address leases - it really is easier in the long run.

> Setting the PC Network control panel to share files and folders at least
> got the PC showing on network neighbourhood and stopped the error
> message 'no network' -- is there an equivalent that I haven't heard of
> on Smoothwall?

The usual network testing is done with 'ping'. Fromt he smoothwall box you
should be able to ping the WAP and the PC (as long as you know their IP
addresses (fixed addresses help here).

>
> The AP appears 'live' -- both LAN and WLAN leds show green.
>
> The Smoothwall installation picked up the ethernet and modem cards --
> should I have told it separately about the AP plugged into the ethernet?
> If so, how?

No why?