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16310
May 2nd, 2004 19:00
Further security/WPA woes ...
Dell Inspiron 8600 1.6M Centrino, XP Pro, Dell Truemobility 1300, SMC 2804WBR Router, not using DHCP (all PC's have static IP addresses)
- WEP works ok in all modes
- SSID broadcast suppress didn't work until latest FIRMWARE update from SMC ... appears to work now
- having a very strange issue with WPA ... I can connect to the internet and email services (WAN) however my (LAN) MS shared resources (VIA NETBIOS) are totally unavailable (connecting via \\(computer name)\(share name) or \\(ip address)\(share name) both return network address not found). Neither Dell nor SMC say they provide support for configuring encryption (Note Dell is also on the dime to provide support for XP because of the 3rd party aggreements with MS ... in other words MS won't provide XP support on a Dell) ... basically if a connection can be established without encryption both Dell and SMC say their stuff is working ... hmmmmmmm ... isn't there something wrong with advertising features you cannot prove as working either via support or documentation?
I would expect that the WPA should be transparent to Peer to Peer machines over a LAN but I haven't been able to determine what the real issue is. Turning off WPA or enableing WEP works fine.
I used the WPA-PSK TKIP option
Anyone have an idea on how to chase this down further?
Message Edited by bjdobs on 05-02-2004 03:28 PM
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schmieg
335 Posts
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May 3rd, 2004 02:00
"- having a very strange issue with WPA ... I can connect to the internet and email services (WAN) however my (LAN) MS shared resources (VIA NETBIOS) are totally unavailable "
A quick question. Are you running NetBIOS on TCP/IP or on Net BEUI or otherwise? It shoudl be on TCP/IP for WPA to work reliably.
bjdobs
6 Posts
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May 3rd, 2004 03:00
Not using Netbui ... netbios on TCPIP
schmieg
335 Posts
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May 3rd, 2004 03:00
schmieg
335 Posts
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May 3rd, 2004 03:00
This might be a pain, but reset the router and the cards to default settings. If your LAN works then you have a starting point. If it doesn't, you may have hardware or Windows setup issues.
Now, one at a time, make all of the changes you want to see where you lose LAN connectivity and then return to the defaults. That should identify the specific problem which is most likely a setup one. If it doesn't, try changing two things at a time and then returning to default. You may find more than one is a problem or that a combination of two or more changes causes the problem.
bjdobs
6 Posts
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May 3rd, 2004 03:00
Hi Mike,
Thanx for the input ... I have been down that road at least 3 times ... once with SMC once with Dell and more then once by myself ... the first issue was the SMC firmware ... once I got past the original bugs it worked ok until I went to try and print on my network printer ... my gut feeling is it has something to do with the 802.1x authentication but I don't have the tools to prove it ... at this point I still strongly suspect the SMC firmware being that it is a brand new product and it didn't work out of the box (needed a firmware update) The key here is that the network works perfectly with no encryption, and or with wep ... the moment I turn on WPA I loose my LAN connections. The WAN is fine.
Do you know of any documentation that adequately describes the options under the authentication tab in the XP Wireless dialog? I gather that these certificates are somethimg one has to subscribe to??? $$$???
bjdobs
6 Posts
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May 3rd, 2004 04:00
I do have all the updates installed as per the MS update site but will run down this one just in case ... although I read one of the threads stating this was included in one of the updates. But at this point it won't hurt to cover all bases.
schmieg
335 Posts
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May 3rd, 2004 04:00
bjdobs
6 Posts
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May 3rd, 2004 15:00
Installed the Q815485 (SP2) WPA Patch
Still getting the same error message when attempting to map a resource: Network Path (path) could not be found.
Just on a wim I attempted to connect to a LAN/Wired PC via PC Anywhere and it connected.
So if PCA was able to connect then WPA must be working (???) so I decided to retry another test ... NIS is running on all machines so I turned off security on 2 machines and then only on the machine I was trying to connect to and was able to connect to it in both situations ...
Now trying to determine what the difference could be by just changing the encryption of the wireless connection ... why would NIS allow connection in one situation and not another??? (WEP vs WPA) especially when these are wireless protocols and should be transparent to the LAN wired protocols.
I will start digging into the symantec site knowledgebase and see if I can find any ideas about this failure ... I still suspect something on the SMC is not working right.
bjdobs
6 Posts
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May 3rd, 2004 16:00
NIS logs indicate the Windows SMB 2000 and Netbios Rules are blocking the network requests ... not sure why these do not kick in when WPA is not active ... Maybe someone can explain that to me?
anyway I found a work around ... I have added my wireless static IP as a Trusted PC to all my LAN machines
Thanx for your time ... hope this helps others down the road.