[P1] Wireless help request

[Scott Warren]

Yes, switches are boring creatures, but they have things that are not 
boring plugged into them... like computers and servers.  Finding a 
wireless signal is not boring and to those who know how to see it, they 
tend to have a peek...

If you are worried about outside users, take your laptop outside and 
see if you even get a signal.  Might go ahead and get in to the 
wireless critter and setup the security if you are worried about that.


On Apr 13, 2004, at 11:39 AM, Jean-Paul Thuot wrote:

> Well thanks for all of that, I feel much better.  Mostly the reason I 
> wanted to administer it is to lock it down from outside 'users'.
>
> I appreciate you taking the time to answer me so thoroughly (not 
> pedantically at all).
>
> Jean-Paul
>
>
> On 14/04/2004, at 0:17, <kollar at alltel.net> wrote:
>
>>> I have recently purchased a wireless access point (not a router)
>>
>> There's your first clue -- it's not a router. :-)
>>
>>> to go with my new airport card.  I plugged the access point into my 
>>> router,
>>> fired up the airport and voila I was surfing wireless.
>>>
>>> ... The manual says the default IP address of the
>>> access point is 192.168.1.100, but the router's internal address is
>>> 192.168.123.xxx, and thus computers connecting to this router are 
>>> given
>>> IP addresses in this range.  Therefore the access point cannot have 
>>> the
>>> default address, but so far I have been unable to discover the IP
>>> address of it.
>>
>> That's because it's, in network terms, a "switch" or a
>> "bridge" (the only difference is that a switch attempts
>> to deliver only packets going to machines on the other
>> side, while a bridge simply copies everything from one
>> side to the other). Since they operate at the link-
>> layer, or MAC (Media Access Control, not Mac) level,
>> basically Ethernet addresses, they don't even *need* an
>> IP address to do what they're supposed to do. However,
>> most of them have an IP address so you can manage (i.e.
>> configure or monitor) them.
>>
>>> Is there some way I can sniff out
>>> the access point's IP address?
>>
>> It's most likely 192.168.1.100, just like the manual
>> says. Have you tried pinging that address from the
>> wireless side? You *might* have to manually give a laptop
>> an IP address like 192.168.1.88 to talk to it. You could
>> then run a port scan on it to see what it has available --
>> for example, if port 80 is open, you can talk to it with a
>> web browser.
>>
>> I wouldn't worry about it though, if it's doing its job.
>> Switches are rather boring critters, when it comes right
>> down to it, unless you have a bunch of them talking to
>> each other in a network.
>>
>> Heh... I knew that spending last week in a switching &
>> routing class would come in handy. :-)
>>
>> Pedantically yours,
>>
>>     Larry