[X4U] Netgear and AOL

[Stroller]

On Dec 30, 2004, at 9:54 pm, Jon wrote:

> I have a wireless Netgear router, model WGR614 v. 4, and an AOL 
> account (that I'm basically happy with). My problem is that I can't 
> run the AOL OS X client unless I do a hatchet job on the router 
> settings. Netgear support (while I had it) and AOL each point to the 
> other and are of little help.
>
> My network works without a hitch - wired and wireless (b and g) - 
> except for the AOL OS X client. All browsers and time servers (for 
> example) work perfectly on each of my machines...

Have you tried changing the MTU? AOL's network requires packets be 
below a certain length, around 1300 or 1400 (bytes?), IIRC.

I would try changing this in the router - there's certainly a setting 
for it on Netgear's DG834G, and I set it to 1200. This should affect 
all packets going out to AOL's side, so all the NAT clients should 
work. Ha!

Alternatively, there the MTU can be set independently on each machine, 
but I didn't have success the once I attempted that. I can't really say 
why the Windows clients are working & the Mac not (I didn't even know 
AOL made a Mac version of their software), so this suggestion is a 
little speculative.  A Google for "MTU AOL" will prove to you that I'm 
not entirely guessing in the dark, however - MTU is a known thingy with 
AOL, but for some reason not usually amongst their support staff. I'd 
also check Google and Google Groups for "AOL 
your_broadband_modem_device".

> ... I found a workaround for the Mac AOL clients. The workaround is to 
> disable the DMZ for one of the Macs. Then AOL works on that Mac 
> (only);

Am I reading correctly: "disable the DMZ for one of the Macs" to mean, 
"place the Mac in the DMZ"? If that's the case, then presumably the 
router is forwarding all incoming packets for which it has no relevant 
entry in the NAT table to the Mac. In this case, ports would seem to be 
the obvious suspect.

> AOL suggested something like that double NAT was happening - not true; 
> all four machines use DHCP so only the router is doing NAT. IAC, it 
> doesn't affect the Windows client.

So we're confident the device supplying the broadband to the Netgear 
isn't NATting?

Stroller.