Wireless clients reaching eachother?

[frejac]

Hi!

I have a 870-router running 12.4(9)T2.

my setup consists of a bunch of PC's connected using a 3com wireless bridge and one wireless laptop. The 870 is also acting firewall, so it has an internet connection in fa4.

All devices can reach the router and internet. But the laptop and the other devices cannot connect to each other. Is there a command that I need to enter to allow two wireless clients (bridge + laptop) to connect to eachother? Or is it just the stupid 3com bridge that is acting wierd?

A capture of the traffic shows that the PC's dont get any answers from the arp request. So I just tried to enter static arps on the hosts, but that didnt help.

Any advices would be highly appreciated

The wireless setup is like this:

interface Dot11Radio0

description WLAN

no ip address

!

encryption key 1 size 128bit 7 my_key transmit-key

encryption mode wep mandatory

!

ssid my_ssid

authentication open

!

speed basic-54.0

station-role root

no dot11 extension aironet

bridge-group 1

bridge-group 1 spanning-disabled

end

Not the best security, but there is no other options as long as I keep the bridge....

Thanks

[didyap]

This looks like an issue with the configuration on the bridge. Are the wired devices able to communicate with each other?

[dsidley]

I believe you have to enable PSPF (public secure packet forwarding) to have two wireless devices connect while using the same AP... this is not allowed by default

[scottmac]

Actually, I think it'd be disable PSPF.

FWIW

Scott

[jdsuhr]

I've been having the same problem for several months now and it's driving me NUTS. The problem is *not* your 3Com bridge... I'm using an 871W (with wireless built right in to the chassis) and it still refuses to arp for wireless clients. It's totally unrelated to PSPF, as turning it off and on made no difference.

I'm reasonably convinced this is a bug. I'm going to open a TAC case and see what they say.

[ryanspeed]

just curious if you got a positive response from TAC on this that led to a solution?

[jdsuhr]

No, I ended up replacing it with an Apple Airport Extreme. Go figure. Now the 871 is just a lab box.

FWIW, I will mention that this was about 18 months ago, so I'm sure tons of new code has come out since then... it may be worth trying the latest IOS to see if the same behavior still exists.