High power wireless router - DHCP trouble

[steve4544]

I was seduced by the promise of a no-name, 1-watt G router for $50. This is several times the normal transmit power. I am setting up wireless access to a church campus with a diameter of about 300 ft.

The router does indeed have a stonger signal and longer range than others I have used, but...

My problem is with DHCP - the router's WAN port does not get an IP adress from my Time Warner cable modem (Arris TM502G - also provides phone service).

Both my MacBook and Netgear WNR834B are able to get IP addresses from the cable modem.

I have been able to make things work by assigning a static IP address to the router's WAN port. I found the current IP address by connecting my laptop directly to the cable modem. This is not a reliable solution, because the lease on that address will expire in a day and the router will not renew it, since it thinks it has a static address.

After much searching, I found that the device is made by a Taipei company, Argtek. They mostly sell to OEMs and have no useful information or updates on their web site.

Any ideas would be appreciated. I have thought of capturing the DHCP packets sent by the router and checking for errors in the request. But I have no way fix anything because I can't modify the router's firmware.

Thanks very much for any suggestions.

Steve

 

[ElderGeek]

I was seduced by the promise of a no-name, 1-watt G router for $50. This is several times the normal transmit power. I am setting up wireless access to a church campus with a diameter of about 300 ft.

The router does indeed have a stonger signal and longer range than others I have used, but...

My problem is with DHCP - the router's WAN port does not get an IP adress from my Time Warner cable modem (Arris TM502G - also provides phone service).

Both my MacBook and Netgear WNR834B are able to get IP addresses from the cable modem.

I have been able to make things work by assigning a static IP address to the router's WAN port. I found the current IP address by connecting my laptop directly to the cable modem. This is not a reliable solution, because the lease on that address will expire in a day and the router will not renew it, since it thinks it has a static address.

After much searching, I found that the device is made by a Taipei company, Argtek. They mostly sell to OEMs and have no useful information or updates on their web site.

Any ideas would be appreciated. I have thought of capturing the DHCP packets sent by the router and checking for errors in the request. But I have no way fix anything because I can't modify the router's firmware.

Thanks very much for any suggestions.

Steve

Can't you set the allocation range of the DHCP service to a small number, then pick fixed addresses outside the range?
I, too was seduced by the argtek routers. Got 2 brand new 1211s for $10 each. Now 1500 mW, and allegedly upgradable to dd-wrt, but I haven't tried that yet. They did mention on the web that there's a (literally) Chinese Copy out there that has one fake Antenna, and possibly other defects, but mine checked out OK. I am having trouble getting it to play nice with my UVerse main router, but watch this space...

 

[Nullity]

Sadly, the user you replied to hasn't been active for 7+ years.

What sort of problems are you having with getting the APs to work with the UVerse router? Try hard to avoid double-NAT.

 

[ElderGeek]

Sadly, the user you replied to hasn't been active for 7+ years.

What sort of problems are you having with getting the APs to work with the UVerse router? Try hard to avoid double-NAT.

I think the main problem is rust - it's been several years since I was active in network systems, and my brain and many other tools are "rusty". Apparently, I even misread the thread date-I thought it was current - sorry about that.
My long-term target is to use the 2 routers and 2 high-gain yagis to make a remote satellite guest (sub)network for a friend with a farm and a couple RV campsites on a "foreign" WAN. My starting point was just to use a single router (guest subnet) here in my U-verse home net to learn the router. I do apparently need 2 NATs to isolate the guest subnet, and I know U-verse is not friendly to this from lots of experience with a couple airport-extreme's here. That taught me that even strict bridge mode has a lot of strange behaviors. So the immediate question is whether I bite the dd-wrt bullet now or a bit more effort to make it work as it came out of the box (ralink router code, I think).
Thanks for your offer of help. I hope it extends out to this deep in the swamp.