A story of a PC, a wired router, an AP & a 360

[joffa]

Hi all
Having a bit of a nightmare configuring my MCE to talk to my MCX.
Built myself a Pentium 2 PC which was great fum, and my first (I'm not that technical I have to say!).
The PC is all running fine and is connected to a cable TV service via a Haupagge TV card. MCE2005RU2 all up & running & looks great on the PC, but that's where the 'great' bit ends.
I'm having some troubles getting my PC & 360 MCX to talk to each other over wireless. I did my research first & planned the system with an 802.11a/g wireless set up since everyone seemed to suggest a would incurr significantly less network interferance.
Problem was that that a/g routers are as rare as hens teeth here - just can't get them for some reason, so I ended getting this product - an a/g Access Point...WAG302 - ProSafeâ„¢ Dual Band Wireless Access Point - NETGEAR.com
Imagine my surprise when I opened the box to find a unit with 2 HUGE antennas (should have no trouble with network strength I thought), has 2 radios, one for a & one for g, but only one LAN port. Ignorance on my part really - I thought I was buying a router which would have a WAN & 4 LAN's or something.
So my solution was to go out & buy a wired router also (DLink DI604), then run the following set-up..

WAN (cable)
|
Wired router (DI604) -- Ethernet (PC motherboard)
|
Access Point (WAG302)
~
MCX (360)

Where -- & | = wired & ~ = wireless

No chance getting this to work....360 won't even see the PC (though the AP will see the XBox's MAC address.
I think it's all got something to do with DHCP clients & servers, but I'm really struggling. Got a thread running on the Green Button too, but that site's down
Any tips (a step by step, do this, then this would help since networking is right on the edge of my capabilities at the moment).
Thanks all
Jof

[vlad]

You have to disable DHCP server on your wireless router.
Download reference manual for it and check if DHCP server is disabled in Advanced IP settings.
Make sure that you enable DHCP Client in Basic settings.
Make sure that DHCP server is enabled on your wired router.

[joffa]

Thanks Vlad
I'm still having problems....
My AP requires me to set a fixed IP so I log into the admin page to set it up. When I do this I loose the connection to the net.
So is the trade off that I can either have a PC that talks to my MCX or the Intenet, but not both?
Confused!
Jof

[badapple]

Hey joffa, I've just looked into this for you. It should be solvable. Unlike many Netgear products, this AP seems to be able to be configured for any network range.

I'm assuming here that your D-Link router is issueing DHCP addresses.

Check your PCs IP address in the network connections. Right click the Local Area Network icon in the Network Connections Window and select 'Status'. Click the 'Support' tab then the 'Details' button. Note down the 4 banks of numbers for IP Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway and DNS server.

Go to the basic IP setting in the Netgear 302 settings and change the IP address to the same format as the IP address of your computer **BUT** make sure the digits in the last box are different to your PC. For example: If your PC is 192.168.0.8, then make the Netgear's IP 192.168.0.11, or any number you know is not being used by another device on your network. Copy the subnet mask, default gateway and (primary) DNS numbers to the netgear EXACTLY as they appear on your PC.

**IMPORTANT NOTE*** after saving these settings, keep a note of the IP address you allocated to the Netgear 302, this is the number you will need to key into your web browser to aceess its interface in the future, not the factory preset as stated in the manual.

Save the setting and restart the AP, fire up the 360. Check the network setting on the system blade and make sure they conform with those of the PC and the AP. You should be in business. The MCE PC should give you a popup to say it's detected the XBox and you can go ahead and configure the MCX settings via the Setup.exe program. Be sure to deleete any previous computer associations on the 360 first though.

Feel free to ask if something here doesn't make sense.

EDIT: Further investigation shows the default IP range for these 2 products to be 192.168.0.X, therefore, there should never have been an issue with the IP ranges unless, the D-Link product cuts its range off before .230. Some routers only issue up to .200 by default. Check your documentation/configs, and adjust the settings in the D-link router to extend beyond .230 if necessary. You should still be able to maintain the Netgear's default IP address as a fixed address in Client Mode if it fits the D-link's IP range. As an alternative, give the Netgear a fixed IP address below the D-link's range and note the address for admin purposes as stated in my original post. Even in client mode, you should still manually add the default gateway and DNS settings to ensure valid fixed address authentication.

[scootabug]

You had any luck yet joffa? I'm sure I can help you with this too.

Cheers,
Scoota.