Internal bridging: wireless connections don't work

Started by Steve

I'm trying to use Bandwidth Monitor to manage our 25GB satellite data quota at home with 6 older kids and lots of devices. smile

Here is my current configuration:

Satellite modem (Excede)
|
V
NetGear FVS318G Firewall/Router - DHCP (192.168.1.10-49)
192.168.1.1
|
V
192.168.1.8
BM Bridge Box (2 NICs with bridge configured per BM internal bridge instructions)
192.168.1.9
|
V
NetGear GS108T Smart Switch -> PCs, other Ethernet devices
192.168.1.10
|
V
Belkin N750 DB Wi-Fi (AP mode)
192.168.1.50
|
V
iPods, Phones, laptops, etc.
192.168.1.11+

The bridge can ping the LAN ip addresses including wireless devices and can ping gateway and the internet. PCs connected to GS108T Switch via ethernet can ping the internet and LAN ip addresses too. Wireless devices connected to the Belkin AP cannot connect to the internet but can ping LAN addresses.

My rules for individual devices (primarily MAC based) on the LAN detect no activity when looking at the 192.168.1.8 (WAN) interface but do detect a little activity on the 192.168.1.9 (LAN) interface. I do not have the "ignore LAN traffic" checked per the recommendation with internal bridging.

It appears that the bridging isn't working correctly although I'm only marginally network savvy so could be doing something dumb.

Here is the bridge BM Box configuration:

Running Windows 7 with windows firewall disabled.

NIC1 (WAN side)
IP - 192.168.1.8
Mask - 255.255.255.0
Gateway - 192.168.1.1
Metric - 100

NIC2 (LAN side)
IP - 192.168.1.9
Mask - 255.255.255.0
Gateway - none
Metric - 50

Added the static route: route -p ADD 192.168.1.1 MASK 255.255.255.255 192.168.1.8


Do you see what I may be doing wrong?

Thanks and I love the product so far - very easy to understand and configure. Kudos on a straight forward design!
Steve
SoftPerfect Support forum - Andrew avatar image

Re: Internal bridging: wireless connections don't work   25 June 2015, 00:29

Thank you for the detailed description. Everything looks correct, though I'd like to confirm a few things:

All devices connected to the switch by cable work, but those connected wirelessly to the AP, which is in turn connected to the same switch, don't? Is this correct?

Also, could you please post here your complete ruleset? Export it to a .DB file, compress to ZIP and attach here.
Yes, that is correct on the connectivity. I'm currently at work and won't be able to export the rules until I get home this evening (US east coast) but will do so as soon as I can.

I also tried removing the switch and plugging the AP directly to the bridge and the cabled devices into it but it behaved the same way.
I found that I had an all-inclusive rule at the top that I removed so I'm starting to see more numbers but still have trouble with devices attached to the Wi-Fi AP but think that it's probably a config issue on that device so I'll poke around a bit more to see what I can discover.
SoftPerfect Support forum - Andrew avatar image

Re: Internal bridging: wireless connections don't work   26 June 2015, 09:46

It does look a bit odd, as if the AP did something to its network packets so they don't pass the bridge. I assume if you plug the AP directly into the router, then it works?

As to seeing what MAC addresses are in operation, you could create a rule like this:
Source: Your IP address range
Destination: Any
Rate: Unlimited
Interface: LAN
Tracking: By source MAC address

This rule will display every detected MAC address as a separate stream in the rules view, which may be helpful for testing or gathering addresses. It needs to be placed on the top of the ruleset.

Hope this helps.

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