network bridge trauma

[axiomatic]

hi all.

this is the first time i have posted in these forums and have only just signed up but have been using them for a while to get answers to other queries, so thought it would be the best place to ask for assistance.


i am having a wee bit of trouble with a network bridge and was wondering if anyone can suggest anything obvious that i might be missing. i have had a search around this forum and google but haven't turned up anything that's helped.


i have a rig running XP which has two network cards - onea Realtek RTL8139 wired 10/100, and the other a Belkin Wireless 54g (FSD7000). on their own, both cards work fine and dandy - i can access the net if i have just the wireless card running (network layout is rig > wireless > wireless access point > switch > adsl) and i can ping across the wired card if the wireless isn't running.

i want to be able to allow a machine on the other end of the wired link (in this case, an xbox) to get to the adsl, however, whenever i create a network bridge in XP, all network connectivity goes down the pan - i cannot even access the 'net anymore, my DHCP can't be accessed to give an IP to the bridge, and it self-assigns a private 169 and does nothing more.


my question - does anyone have any ideas why the creation of the network bridge might cause this? the only thing that i could think is that the wireless card is having some issues going into promiscous mode (sorry if the spellings off, i hate that word lol). whenever i try and query the bridge using

netsh bridge show adapter

they both return as "unknown" - and forcing them active doesn't return any errors but doesn't make any difference, either.


any help, suggestions or points in the right direction greatly appreciated any further info required about my setup, please ask.

thanks in advance,
axiomatic.

[Tifosi]

I've tried similar in the past with the same problems. My rig accessed the net via cable LAN and my laptop was to wirelessly connect to my rig and the rig was to bridge the connections. I had the same problem that I lost internet connectivity.

My solution was setting the Ethernet controller on the rig as ICS shared connection disable the XP firewalls and then use the wireless connection between the laptop and PC and tell the laptop to use ICS and the rig as its gateway. But I guess ICS can't be done with an Xbox. In the end I abandoned the bridge, I'm not sure what its purpose exactly is, I thought it should have been the solution to my situation.

[axiomatic]

yeah you get that feeling don't you - makes sense, a network bridge should bridge networks and still allow the pc it's on to do stuff... right...? *coughs*

i cannot set any connections on this pc to shared as this would force me to allow the connection to be set by XP as 192.168.0.1/24 - however, this is in use by my router, and i am also going to have to replicate any solution to my housemate's setup as he too has an xbox that he wants to go 'live' with in exactly the same situation, wired to a wireless rig. my quick fix is to move my xbox to my computer room and plug into directly into the switch (don't want to cable outside my room, it would get out of hand again, hence the wireless setup attempts ) but that won't work for him.

good god, two microsoft systems here, and yet there is trouble getting it to work... though i admit the situation is slightly less than normal and the xbox isn't really at fault, it can't see what the XP rig isn't providing, if you see what i mean.

[Tifosi]

specify the XP box's IP in the adapter settings???

[Paul Adams]

Look in the online help for what a network bridge does, it's not what you want (it creates a single network segment from multiple ones).

You want to use ICS on the internal network, and you can change the IP from the default 192.168.x.x to whatever you like.

I have no clue if the XBox can be given a static IP or if it has to talk to a DHCP server? If it has to have a DHCP-allocated IP then you're out of luck, as you need to specify the gateway as the XP client and give it an address manually.

[aidanjt]

you need to manually specify the ip address, dns server, and gateway on your 'bridged' interface. Windows XP bridging is flakey with wireless lan cards at best, make sure you have SP2 installed, its a bit better at dealing with it.

*edit* by and large.. DHCP is more hassle than its worth, especially for home users, its completely pointless for them (other than to serve for complete laziness and 'user-friendliness' *gag*)