Help - sudden loss of ALL my AP's

[MediaMan09]

Up to last week, all was well, for well over a year or more!! Need help now.

I have D-LINK DIR 655 wired/wireless router, and have setup 3 TRENDNET TEW-452BRP around the house as access points . The latter of coruse have DCHP disabled and are given IP addresses that are outside the range that your new router assigns to DHCP clients

Suddenly, I lost the ability to use ALL of the access points - meaning

• I could see them lsited in when seraching for a connection ( on laptop, ipod etc)
• I could select them

But:

• they would not work ( mobile device would say unable to connect)
• I could not longer ping them
• I could no longer access the via thier IP addresses in IE explorer to get to their admin screens

Yet:

• I could still access the main wireless rotuer itself (the DIR 655)
• I could still ping the main router
• I could still access the main router via its IP address in IE explorer to get to the admin screen

Clearly all this pointd to a problem with the DIR 655 router; the only common thread.

Thinking back, I tried to recall 'what changed', and yes there was a router change. Sppefically I recently upgraded the firmware, to 1.35NA (as I had upgraded to Windows 7 and was getting some very poor transfer rates, now mostly fixed). I cant recall now if it kept all my setting or if I restored via import, but they are all there ( as I have many pc's wth static IPs assigned and they were all there).

So my question is, what sepcfic setting should I be looking for in the router that might be preventing all the access points from working.

I have powered all the devices off/on. I dont really want to do a hard reset on all the APs ( it took a while to get them going at thet time... and it really does appear is not the APs anyway but the DIR-655.)

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[leeishom]

What is your addressing scheme?

Besides hardware, firmware, layer 1 issues - Im focusing on, IP addressing is the problem.

 

[thiggins]

I agree with leeishom. First check to see if the router IP address changed.

 

[MediaMan09]

I agree with leeishom. First check to see if the router IP address changed.

The main router IP address has not changed. I can see it, ping it, access it, etc. So I know it is correct.

The AP IP address, used to work, I can no longer ping it, access it, so I can no longer confirm it is still what I think it is.. I suppose I can disconenct them all, hard reset them all and start over. but it is doubtful that all the AP's suddenly failed at the same time. Impossible I would say.

As to my addressing scheme:

• My router address is xx.yy.0.1
• Subnet mask is 255.255.255.0
• DCHP IP Adddress range is xx.yy.0.100 to xx.yy.0.199
• I assign all my pc static IPS, ie
• - PC01 is xx.yy.0.191
• - PC02 is xx.yy.0.192
• - etc
• The IP Address for the APs are
• - xx.yy.0.252
• - xx.yy.0.253
• - xx.yy.0.254

The above scheme was working fine for well over a year.

I must suddenly be missing an important setting, but dont know which one.

The only thing I just noticed that looks off (might be unrelated) is that :

Steup/Network/Setting/Router Settings/SubnetMask says : 255.255.255.0 , but
Status/DeviceInformation/WAN/SubnetMask says: 255.255.254.0 (and I dont know how to change it)

 

[leeishom]

Interesting.

Have you reset the devices, yet?

 

[MediaMan09]

Interesting.

Have you reset the devices, yet?

No, not yet, just power cycled them. I am hoping I will find the right router setting to fix this. Its the only thing that makes sense to knock out all three APs at once.

But failing that, yes, I guess I will have to and see if that changes anything.

 

[MediaMan09]

The only thing I just noticed that looks off (might be unrelated) is that :

Setup/Network/Setting/Router Settings/SubnetMask says : 255.255.255.0 , but
Status/DeviceInformation/WAN/SubnetMask says: 255.255.254.0 (and I dont know how to change it)

Is the above normal or a problem??

.

 

[leeishom]

Based on my Routers' GUI for WAN addressing, there is no Subnet mask.
What type of Network does your ISP utilize?

 

[MediaMan09]

Based on my Routers' GUI for WAN addressing, there is no Subnet mask.
What type of Network does your ISP utilize?

1) Not sure how to answer that question , but my ISP is Rogers ( CANADA)

2) The 255/254 screenshot is below... but I see no way of changing it ( and dont even know if its related)

3) I also just noticed the MAC address for WAN is diffferent than for LAN ... is that normal?

4) I reset one the AP's to factory, and then to an older bin file, and again manually. Made no difference. There is 'something' in teh router setting blocking my AP's.

 

[thiggins]

The WAN subnet mask depends on what your ISP sets. It has nothing to do with the LAN subnet mask and nothing to do with your problem.

Yes, it is normal for WAN, LAN and even WLAN MAC addresses to be different.

You may already have done this, but I've lost track.

Connect one of your computers via Ethernet and try pinging the router and AP IPs. If you can ping, then try connecting to the admin pages.

You can also try changing the wired computer to get its IP via DHCP instead of static IP and see if anything changes.

 

[MediaMan09]

Connect one of your computers via Ethernet and try pinging the router and AP IPs. If you can ping, then try connecting to the admin pages..

Individually, everything as acecssible.. that is:
- if I connect the AP via cable to a spare PC, I can access it , get to the admin pages, etc
- I can do the same with my router
- But I cannot access the AP, in their normal configuration (attached to router as per original)

You can also try changing the wired computer to get its IP via DHCP instead of static IP and see if anything changes.

I was thinking to do that, but as is, with static reserved IP's, my mobile devices have no problem wirelessly connecting to the main router and accessing LAN and WAN. So static IPs are ntoe a problem for the mobile devices. Those same mobile devices can "see" the APs when listing available connections, can "connect", but can no longer access the WAN or LAN....as if the main router is blocking them.

 

[stevech]

any chance that power-cycling the APs caused them to revert to the factory defaults - because their customized settings were not saved to non-volatile memory in the AP?

 

[MediaMan09]

any chance that power-cycling the APs caused them to revert to the factory defaults - because their customized settings were not saved to non-volatile memory in the AP?

Nope. Issue existed before I power cycled them . And one AP hasnt been poer cycled at all . And another I accessed directly via cable has been reset to way it alway was, and I still have the issie per post 1.

Let me asekd this... is there a utility one can run to see a listing of all connected devices including AP's ??


.

 

[stevech]

Can the APs be disconnected and brought to a place where you can reset/reconfigure them?

have you tried doing a ping command to the expected LAN IP addresses of each AP?

The AP vendor likely has a utility that will discover the products on your LAN by doing MAC layer packet schemes.

There are also "port scanners" as IT network tools. Someone on this forum may have a suggestion on a free one. But I'd try the AP vendor's product discovery program.

Best is the approach in the first paragraph

 

[MediaMan09]

I isolated the problem Bad switches.

But still need help with a new solution.

For some reason, anything going though my NETGEAR GS605 GIGABIT switches is getting blocked. I have TWO of them, and they are now both behaving the same way.

For example , as a test, I pulled every thing apart, and did a simple test:
PC -> GS605 > DIR 655 is dead but
PC -> DIR 655 is fine.

I have no idea at how this can be, or how it could have happened to two switches at the same time.

At this point I dont care "why" ; just happy I found it. But I need to buy replacement hardware asap . Having our home network down is driving everyone crazy.

I will throw out the switches. There is nothing to reconfigure and no way to fix them. APs can stay for now or be replaced as well - I've been wanting to replace the APs anyway per post here

The DIR-655 has been solid since I bought it. It stays but can re-deployed in a new spot if I get a new router for the office.

My setup is per pic below

So for starters, who makes reliable switches?

 

[MediaMan09]

Looks like I am landing on :TRENDnet GREENnet 8-Port Ethernet Gigabit Switch (TEG-S80G) re availability, price point, previous positive experirence with TRENDNET, good reviews, jumbo frame suport, etc..
http://www.trendnet.com/langen/products/products.asp?cat=113#

... but am very confused about the difference between the model varirations:

TEG-S8
TEG-S8Dg
TEG-S80g
TEG-S90TX
TEG-S80TXD
TEG-S80TXE
TEG-S811Fi
TEG-S8g
Ver 2
Ver 1


Is there a comparison table somewhere??