Bugzilla – Bug 8418
Issues connecting through a range expander
Last modified: 2009-05-15 09:19:22 UTC
I've been helping a user for the past couple of weeks and we finally came to the conclusion that he is running into intermittent network connectivity issues when the Controller is trying to access his network through a Linksys Wireless Range Expander. His setup is as follows. - three level home - bottom floor has router and SB Reciever and most of the time the Controller - When he is on the bottom floor, everything works as they should - When he gets on the top floor, and restarts the Controller, it will not connect, at least not all the time. Looking at the wireless network detail on the Controller, it attempts to obtain an IP address from the router through the Range Expander, but is unable to and gets a 169.x.x.x address.
Ross to research, acquire and test
James could you please be more specific about what you'd like me to test? Personally I don't feel this is a bug: Squeezebox Controller is limited to the range of the wireless network. Julius, I presume we're talking about WRE54G? What solution have you found for the customer? I would recommend he consider hard-wiring additional wireless access points, or re-locating the router to the second floor or perhaps the 3rd floor, as most routers broadcast downward better than they do upwards.
Its not really a solution the customer is looking for with his current setup as his router/SB Duet are in the basement. He was merely testing it out on the third floor because he was interested in getting a second unit for that floor. Here are the details on the customer's network appliance model numbers: Linksys WRE 54G v3 Netgear WGR614 v6 Once correction from my original post. This customer has a Squeezebox Controller and an SB3.
Julius: Can you verify with the customer that other 802.11 compliant device are able to obtain a valid IP address via the Linksys WRE54G range extender. Please find out what firmware versions are on both the Linksys and Netgear as well. Is is SB3 able to attach to the Linksys and get a valid address? Is the customer in WEP or WAP or no security Please provide the RN Ticket number as we may want to research more with the customer.
targetting as future so it doesn't show up on our search for untargetted bugs
Thank you James for acquiring a range expander. Thank you Joseph for helping me ship it back to Linksys (RMA). Will update this bug when I get a working unit.
This issue is causing too many calls for support. Any update on the RMA, Ross? Thanks.
Customer's Right Now ticket number, 080529-001831. He has a couple tickets regarding the same issue so some of the information needed may be in a different ticket.
Sorry for not updating sooner, I've had the replacement hardware for a little while now but was too busy with higher priority bugs. I tested this today and I was unable to reproduce any problems once I got the WRE54G working. Setting up the range expander is confusing and difficult, and I still haven't managed to get it to work with encryption. I'm "repeating" from a WRT54Gv2.2 with dd-wrt. I'm using the standard repeating configuration, same channel, same SSID. Controller not only connected via the range expander and worked fine, it even roamed to the router and back despite bug 6085 still being open. Julius, I think we'll need some more communication with your customer on this. Double check my usual list of networking suspects, start with specific firmware version of both the router and the repeater. Note: I updated the firmware on the range expander before making any attempt, I regret this as chances are most users wouldn't do that. Also please get the encryption details, make sure the range expander has 2 blue lights, and walk through it all one more time. You were there with me so you saw it work, if the range expander is setup properly, this looks like it should work fine. I know you mentioned that the issue might be intermittent, but lets get all the details we can to try to create a reproducible case.
BTW testing against 7.2 r2873.
I see no reason for this bug to still be open. Bug 6085 shows the status of roaming, and my work in comment #9 shows we don't have any sort of easily reproduced issue with range expanders in general.