[svlug] metrofi wireless

[David E. Fox]

The peplink arrived here last Saturday (it's a four-port wireless hub,
with an antenna etc.) and have a spare box (bruce's actually) to test
this thing with. 

Presently I'm unable to obtain any sort of connection. I've followed
the documentation they supply (www.metrofi.com/peplink) as well as
trying it on a number of Linux live cd's I have available (mostly
flavors of Mepis, along with older kubuntu's and kanotix's) to no
avail. 

I can ping the wireless device (ping 192.168.20.1) and also ping the
address that gets assigned (192.168.20.10, which seems to be the same
each time. According to the Metrofi setup page, this IP is at the lower
range of the Metrofi DHCP list (goes from .10 -> .255) so this may be
good even though I am not positive that a new address is being
generated by DHCP (here, we use only static IPs and that setup hasn't
changed in five years).


Likewise, I can point a browser (I've tried Konquerer and Firefox) to
the box's IP addr (192.168.20.1) and get a sign on screen, type the
password they want, and then it goes through a series of ACKS and
finally (20 secs approx) decides that it can't connect, and can't get a
valid IP address.

Three possibilities, in order of likelihood:

1) DHCP or something related is not working properly
2) the "modem" (for want of a better word, i.e.,the Metro-fi device)
isn't properly working. Either there's a hardware or configuration
problem (and it is possible, but not likely, that the signal isn't
quite there -- but still I'm < 140 feet from the access point. Also
included is the possibility of the wireless access point itself being
broken, but I somehow doubt that - but have no way of testing.

Under 2) there is a setup/debug page on the device, but it gives values
for signal strength and other items that I can't interpret.

3) run out of IPs? Kinda doubtful, but that range can handle only 243
separate IPs it seems. Needless to say, the population of Sunnyvale is
greater than 243 ":).


DHCP might be the culprit, maybe it's not setup properly?


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