WLAN problems

[Guest Whoosh]

This post concerns the fact that I can connect to my wireless network

using my Qtek 9000 PDA, but I never get an IP adress. Any help would be

welcome!

I recently got a Qtek 9000 (running Windows Mobile 5.0), and am trying to

connect to my home wireless LAN.

Using a US Robotics USR5450 wireless acess point and MAC filtering, I get a

network connection pronto. However, I never get a valid IP address from my

DHCP server.

(All is functioning very well when I use my tablet PC to make the same

connection. )

All adapters as seen in the Settings/Configure Network Adapters are set to

'use server assigned IP address'.

Looking at the 'tiacxwln Compatible Wireless Ethernet' adapter I see that

the PDA has received an IP address, though not one I recognise as valid

(IPv6?): [fe80::209:2dff:fe52] After a while, this disappears. Sometimes,

the same field is briefly displaying the internal default [169.252.49.103],

then reverting to the previous one.

I tried hard-setting the WAP to B-mode; no change in results.

Looking at what's happening near the server I see: :shock:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

tcpdump (http://www.tcpdump.org/) output on linux DHCP server (MAC address

obfuscated):

tcpdump -i eth1 -vv -x ether host 00:09:2D:XX:XX:XX

tcpdump: listening on eth1, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 96

bytes

14:17:22.882777 IP0 bad-hlen 0

0x0000: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................

0x0010: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................

0x0020: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ..............

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried excluding the Linux DHCP server from the picture. I connected the

WAP directly to a Windows PC, using Windows internet connection sharing on

Windows XP (SP2). No packets seen with ethereal

(http://www.ethereal.com/). (Perhaps the bad packets are dropped by windows

kernel?)

So, it appears that for some reason Mobile 5.0 has some difficulty

communicating with the DHCP server.

Any ideas, any deeper insight :??:

[Guest jimbouk]

I am guessing that you've already checked this... but the most common reason for a wifi dhcp server giving a 169. address is wep issues.

1) If wep is on, are you sure that you are entering the key correctly?

2) If wep is on, try turning it off to test whether it works correctly

3) Are you sure you've got the right mac code. My Prophet gives two different mac addresses (one for the activesync USB IP connection and one for the wifi adapter)

[Guest Whoosh]

I am guessing that you've already checked this... but the most common reason for a wifi dhcp server giving a 169. address is wep issues.

1) If wep is on, are you sure that you are entering the key correctly?

2) If wep is on, try turning it off to test whether it works correctly

3) Are you sure you've got the right mac code. My Prophet gives two different mac addresses (one for the activesync USB IP connection and one for the wifi adapter)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

yes, yes and yes...

Point is, I do get a connection to the WLAN as such, but when it's time to obtain an IP address nothing further happens... :roll:

[Guest fraser]

Turn off all encyrption on the access point then ensure that the phone network settings for the wireless have EAP disabled. Mine keeps turning itself back on now and again, breaking the connection. It's possible that the EAP is causing the phone to mis-interpret the DHCP requests.

[Guest Whoosh]

Thnx for contributing Fraser.

I was able to circumvent the problem 'simply' by doing the following: I substituted the existing HEX WEP key by an ASCII key. Had to find out the permitted length of the key; by googling it appeared that 13 characters works just fine.

Doesn't explain the strange fenomena I encountered - works just the same... ;)

[Guest fraser]

Yah, seen that happen, done it myself! Must add it to the mental list of "things that commonly go wrong with Wifi".

You'd think the GUI would say "that looks like the wrong length of key, I'm expecting 13 chars", wouldn't you?

[Guest Confucious]

Yah, seen that happen, done it myself! Must add it to the mental list of "things that commonly go wrong with Wifi".

You'd think the GUI would say "that looks like the wrong length of key, I'm expecting 13 chars", wouldn't you?

It's Microsoft - you'd expect it to say "Unknown error code Ax97357625423 in module notgoingtotellyou.dll" ;)