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On Fri, 17 Dec 2010, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Early Airport Base Stations, the type with power, modem, and WAN ports, 
> round, silver, have Lucent Orinoco Waveland (intersil PRISM2) cards in them 
> which work as orinoco_cs, and probably also wavelan_cs (with 2.2 kernel). 
> They are large cards with a place to plug in an antenna.  Weak signal without 
> the antenna.
>
> Someone gave us four of these routers, only one fully working.  (One let me 
> communicate with the router itself wirelessly, one with router and our wired 
> router and the DSL modem,

but it would not access a URL, which I suspected was related to a DNS 
(nameserver) problem.  udhcpc works but assigns (8 times) nameserver 
10.0.1.1 (the Apple Base Station IP).

> I don't know why I can ping base station, wired router, and DSL modem but not 
> get on the internet (at least not with URL - have not tried pinging a DNS 
> number on the internet since that is not very useful).  A fourth one works as 
> expected (with DNS server).  This one that pings all but internet sets up 
> resolv.conf with 8 identical nameserver 10.0.1.1 lines.  Is there perhaps a 
> software fix?  Should I use the DSL modem as nameserver instead? I tried some 
> common nameservers that I used for dialup.
>
> Sindi Keesan

I am plugging a wireless router (Apple) into a wired router, which is 
supposed to cause problems.  Sometimes I use it wired, sometimes wireless.

I found instructions online how to use a router as a repeater, which 
explains what is going on.  You are supposed to use a browser to access 
the router (can't do that with an Apple Base Station, which requires a 
Mac computer or you can use a Windows airport.exe program) and:

1) Give it a static address in the same series as the router into which it 
is plugged.  (I did not, left it at the default setting 10.0.1.1 rather 
than assigning 192.168.99.2 or higher to match our wired router which is
a telephone device too).

2)  Turn off DHCP  - I don't need to do that, just modify one of its 
outputs (or edit the default.script, see below).

3)  Set it to not act as a DNS server (nameserver).  The DSL modem
should be the nameserver instead.  Since I cannot easily access the
base station to do this, I did everything manually:

Edit /etc/resolv.conf to read
nameserver 192.168.0.1 (or the IP number of your DSL modem, or whatever
usually works when you run DHCP with only one router which might also
be the router's IP number)

So now I know what udhcpc does and can do it manually.

1)  assigns an IP number to match the router it is plugged into
(or that the next device in line is plugged into), in our case
the Apple Base Station - which is 10.0.1.1 so I manually

ifconfig eth0 10.0.1.2

2)  sets the default gateway which is in this case the Apple Base Station

route add default gw 10.0.1.1


3)  assign a DNS nameserver by editing /etc/resolv.conf
The first line you see in there seems to be irrelevant.  In the case
of a 2wire U-verse modem it is something about the modem, and here it is
search domain_not_set.invalid

You probably do not need this line.

I had run udhcpc (not Slackware 7 dhcp which does not work) and it told me 
it was assigning nameserver 10.0.1.1 eight times.  The line appeared eight 
times in /etc/resolv.conf.  I deleted them all and added the proper
IP address of my AT&T DSL modem

nameserver 192.168.0.1


If I had changed the IP address of the Apple thing to match our router
(192.168.99.1 - apple would be 99.2 or higher) then the default gateway
would be 192.168.99.1 as it is when I plug directly into the router.

To summarize:

/etc/pcmcia/start  or insmod proper network card driver if ISA or PCI.

Use busybox udhcpc to determine the IP address of the Apple Base Station 
or other router that is plugged into your main router, in my case 10.0.1.1

ifconfig eth0 10.0.1.2 (or higher if you have several wireless laptops)
route add default gw 10.0.1.1

Put these two lines at the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.S or /etc/rc if you will
always use this setup, or in a script if you want to switch between
one router (wired) and two (wireless - I use my laptop in bed in an 
unheated room, wirelessly).  I have the wired setup in rc as the default, 
and can change this after booting.

edit /etc/resolv.conf to make the nameserver the device to which the
internet signal comes first, in our case DSL modem, 192.168.0.1
DHCP puts in the correct line when you use it with just one router.

nameserver 192.168.0.1

You don't ever need to run DHCP (udhcpc) again unless you change routers.

You can edit the config file for udhcpc to leave nameserver unchanged.

/usr/share/udhcpc/default.script

Just remark out the section on RESOLV_CONF.

Then if you use more than one secondary router you can run DHCP
and it will assign IP number and default gateway and leave nameserver 
unchanged.

If I were to change the settings in the secondary router to match the 
first one, I could probably just use the same IP numbers (192.168.99.X 
instead of 10.0.1.X) with direct wired internet or wireless via wired 
router internet.

I don't know why the fourth Apple device worked with correct nameserver. 
Maybe some Mac user had already turned off the DNS service in it.

Steven's explanation of how to set up one computer as a default gateway 
was helpful.  I suggested this solution to the person that got my working 
Apple device, since she has only two computers and MS even explains how to 
do internet sharing (as does Mac).

This leaves two more base stations to investigate.  The pcmcia card from 
one of them does work, but it did not fix the one with no wireless, so the 
problem must be on the board.   The other one lets me ping the base 
station but not the rest of the network - bad wired card or equivalent, or 
maybe another software problem. No reset button on the exterior.

Lucent Technologies IEEE 802.11 compliant WaveLAN TURBO 11MB SILVER. 
Longer than more recent cards with built-in antennas.  There is a hard 
plastic circular plug over the antenna in one of them.  Apple could easily 
have plugged in an antenna to increase the range.  Their more expensive 
model has a greater range.  We made two bad ones of these into a good one 
once - bad wireless card and good board and vice versa.

I also have a combination print server and router (one parallel and one 
LAN port) with a plugged-in wireless card that works nowhere else - can't 
figure out what driver it uses.  Quite old.  Non-cardbus of course.

Sindi