Procurve & DSL, newbie really needs advice... 1

[ddikeht]

Hello all, I was wondering if someone could please provide me some insight. Here is the situation...

In my old home, DSL ran through a westell 6100 (Bellsouth) into a netgear wireless hub. Everything worked fine on the wired and wireless side. We recently moved to a new house and needed more connections, so I bought a new switch which is an HP Procurve 2524. Bought it because I was told it was one of the better switches, and I would love it.

Hooked it in and... nothing. Checked all the configurations... nothing. The strange thing is that if I hook the old Netgear into the Procurve, the hard and wireless connections work fine. I just cannot get anything by connecting directly to the procurve switch itself. Anyone have any ideas? I have been banging my head against the wall on this!

 

[LawnBoy]

That 2524 is an excellent switch, I'm running about 30 of them.

Please explain in detail how you're trying to hook this all up. Piece by piece, wire by wire.

"We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes

 

[ddikeht]

Lawnboy,

Thanks for the reply and for being gentle on a newbie. The configuration is pretty simple (I think) I have a westell 6100 running in bridged mode (not bridged routed, although I appear to have that option) that feeds, via cat 5, into port 1 of the 2524. I am not using a crossover cable. From the 2524, I have another cat5 cable going into my old netgear wgt624 (This is for wireless). This uses port 2 on the 2524 and the input port of the netgear

If I plug directly into port 3, or any other open port on the 2524 I cannot get out to the internet. I am assigned an IP address, which is 192.168.1.97, and I also have a default gateway, dns and dhcp servers assigned at 192.168.1.254. I believe the gateway address being assigned is the same IP address as the Westell.

If I hook into the Netgear, wired or wireless (thats how I am on the forum) I have full internet connectivity. I talked to HP support who are stumpted, but kept saying the HP switch was level 2, and the Netgear did NAT. No idea what all that means. Any ideas? Should I have bought a different switch?

 

[LawnBoy]

That 2524 is an excellent switch.

I assume you're getting this address info by using "ipconfig /all"?
If those are the addresses you get when plugged into the HP, what addresses are you getting when plugged into the Netgear?

One scenario is that your ISP is only giving you 1 address. The Netgear is getting this address. When you hook up to the Netgear (wired or wireless) the Netgear then assigns a different address to the PC, and "translates" this new address to the address it owns. This is called Network Address Translation (NAT). Now when you plug into the HP, you're not getting a valid address because there is only 1 to be had and the Netgear already has it.

One posible way aroung this is to hook the Netgear directly to the Westel, and then hook the 2524 into the Netgear (backwards from the way you're doing it now, if I'm following you correctly).

"We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes

 

[ddikeht]

Lawnboy,

You have a winner! This works great. I just got off the phone with ATT tech support (who also could not figure this out). This leads me to another question then. I really want to move the wireless upstairs for connectivity. Am I right in assuming that the 2524 switch does not have a router, and the netgear (which does) is providing the routing? If so, how do I remove the netgear from the configuration? Should I buy a router for downstairs to hook to the procurve? I want to keep things very simple, and do not want to have to reconfigure port forwarding on all the devices. I do have another wireless router, is it possible to put this into some sort of mode that will forward all of the ports to the procurve, and then port forward at that point? Will the procurve even port forward? Sorry for all the questions, but I really appreciate your expertise.

 

[LawnBoy]

The problem is not routing, the problem is DHCP (the service that automatically assigns addresses to computers). The Netgear is providing DHCP, thats why everything has to be "downstream" from it. In your situation the device provideing DHCP must also provide NAT.

The 2524 will not provide DHCP (it also does not provide any routing, but that's not the problem in this case).

Are you willing to run a CAT5 cable from where you want the Netgear to where you want the 2524? If so, you could:
1. Move the Westel upstairs and hook it into a different phone jack (DSL should be available on all your phone jacks).
2. Move the Netgear upstairs and hook it into the Westel.
3. Using the CAT5 you ran, hook the Netgear to the 2524.

This will result in the same configuration you're using now, except that the cable between the Netgear and the 2524 will be much longer, as it runs between floors.


"We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes

 

[ddikeht]

That will work perfectly, thanks for the help