On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 05:46:39AM +0430, green bean wrote:
> Our head of IT [who never even heard of m0n0wall or pfSense, hes a
> Windoze-only person]
> says that:
> we have a standard D-Link wireless router. one of the ports is marked WAN,
> the rest are LAN.
> he says you cannot use the WAN port as an uplink because its feed from other
> switches upstream,
> instead of directly off our [satellite] modem.
> True?

Not necessarily true.  It is initially set to be the
default route and depending on the wireless router firmware,
it may not be modifiable.

> He says we should use it as a switch, only using the LAN ports, putting the
> feed from upstream switches into one of those LAN ports.
> Does this make sense?

Somewhat, but not necessarily.  Your definition of upstream
is not automatically clear.  Upstream normally corresponds
to the direction of the default route.

> In switches and hubs, all ports are numbered, none of them marked "uplink."
> He says if port 1 is used as an uplink, the port next to it should be kept
> vacant,
> because it wont work.
> True?

I doubt it, but you can't rule out very poor design of the switch.

> We have a 24 port switch [other switches are upstream] which i plugged my
> laptop into.
> I cant get a regular [192.168 etc] IP, windoze gives me a useless 169.etc IP
> and says limited or no connectivity of course.
> I tried ipconfig/release and ipconfig/renew but that didnt help.
> 
> So I move downstream to a D-Link wireless router with one of its LAN ports
> connected to the 24 port switch.
> Its WAN port is kept vacant for the "reason" discussed above.
> I plug into another of its LAN ports and I get a regular 192.168.etc IP.
> This doesnt make sense because im downstream from the 24 port switch which
> wouldnt give me a regular IP.
> Im guessing the 24 port switch had no more IPs to give out even though it
> had vacant ports.
> Can this be true?

The switch doesn't give out IP addresses.  The wireless
router also has a DHCP server enabled to give out the IP
addresses on its LAN segment.  They probably don't have
a DHCP server enabled on the upstream LAN segment, which 
is why your laptop wouldn't work plugged into that switch.

Dave Smith

> -david on Lotus St. :)

> _______________________________________________
> SoCalFreeNet.org General Discussion List
> To unsubscribe, please visit: 
> http://socalfreenet.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_socalfreenet.org


_______________________________________________
SoCalFreeNet.org General Discussion List
To unsubscribe, please visit: 
http://socalfreenet.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_socalfreenet.org

Reply via email to