[DHCP-server] giving IP-addresses through a wireless router

zenlord · 2009-01-05 20:11:32

Hello,

I live upstairs from my office, so I use the same networking infrastructure throughout the whole house for both work and personal stuff. I have a network setup for me, centralised around a debian stable server using dhcp3-server. All of our machines are named by MAC-address to receive a fixed-IP-address time and time again.

Now I also would like to add my laptop to the network wirelessly, in a way that I can start to think to share my NFS-shares also with the laptop (would save me some running about with a USB-storage device...). But I cannot get the server to control the output of the IP-addresses by the wireless router.

I have tried disabling the DHCP-server on the D-Link wireless router and adding the MAC-address of the wlan0-interface of my laptop to the server, but that didn't help. Today I was trying again to accomplish this, and I saw in the configuration options a 'subnet-option' and I think I am getting there. The only problem is: I cannot risk f*king this up, so I would like to know if this is the right way to accomplish what I want:

1. disabling the DHCP-server on the wireless router
2. adding the MAC-address of the wireless router to our domain and assigning a fixed IPaddress, f. e. 192.168.0.200
3. adding a subnet to the dhcp3-server.conf on the server (192.168.0.1), like this:

subnet 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.250 {
option routers 192.168.0.200;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.250;
option broadcast-address 192.168.0.255;
default-lease-time 86400;
max-lease-time 86400;

host laptop {
hardware ethernet <insert here>;
fixed-address 192.168.0.201;
}
}

This is what I came up with after digging through google, but I would like to have some confirmation before I go and add this to the dhcp-configuration. I don't mind that this doesn't work for my laptop, but I would not like to affect my working environment.

THX!

Zl.

R00KIE · 2009-01-05 22:50:03

Can't you just give a static IP to your laptop outside the DHCP range of your wireless router?
Otherwise if you want to keep your current dhcp server to manage the addresses on wireless too I guess you need to bridge wireless and the lan. I'm not sure about this, never tried it. My wireless router happily gives ip addresses by dhcp or allows the connection with static addresses.

zenlord · 2009-01-06 11:59:46

Hmmm... I could do that, but where's the fun in that?

Bridging is something I also heard of. I'll investigate the possibilities - THX!

Zl.

tomk · 2009-01-06 12:55:36

Stating the obvious, your wifi router is designed to route between two subnets - typically, one internal i.e. your LAN and one external i.e. the connection to your ISP. In this case, not only are both sides internal, but you want them both to be the same subnet. In other words, there is nothing to route. Ideally, you need a wireless access point (AP), not a router, but an access point is essentially a bridge, and many domestic wifi routers can be reconfigured as bridges, With luck, yours is one of them.

dschrute · 2009-01-10 02:26:22

To expand on what tomk said...
I think most DLink wireless routers allow you to disable routing and to act only as a AP. If you're not using the routing capabilities for anything else, just disable that functionality, don't connect anything to the WAN port, and use it as an AP only on the same subnet as your other machines. I've set up a number of friends networks like this, and it works quite well.

Last edited by dschrute (2009-01-10 02:28:32)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-01-05 20:11:32

[DHCP-server] giving IP-addresses through a wireless router

#2 2009-01-05 22:50:03

Re: [DHCP-server] giving IP-addresses through a wireless router

#3 2009-01-06 11:59:46

Re: [DHCP-server] giving IP-addresses through a wireless router

#4 2009-01-06 12:55:36

Re: [DHCP-server] giving IP-addresses through a wireless router

#5 2009-01-10 02:26:22

Re: [DHCP-server] giving IP-addresses through a wireless router

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