Wireless setup works with laptop but not android phone

NiallCon

Hi Guys,
I've come across a bit of a strange (well it is to me) occurence.

Running pfsense 2.0-RELEASE on an old hp desktop I have.
It has 3 Nics

bge0 - LAN (192.168.1.0/24)
ste0 - WAN (PPOE to ISP)
ste1 - Wifi

Ok, so I have an old dlink dir-615 router/wireless box. I wanted to use this as effectively a Wireless Access Point for laptops and phones.

I created a wifi interface in pfsense (called it WIFI) and assigned it with a fixed ip address of 192.168.0.0/24. I also enabled a dhcp server for this interface with a range of 192.168.0.1-25. I also enable dns forwarder.
On the dlink I gave the router a fixed ip address of 192.168.0.250. I enabled the wifi on the router but disabled the dhcp function in the dlink. I then connected a cat5 from one of the LAN ports on the dlink to the ste1 nic in the pfsense box. To avoid any potential problems the wifi is running in 'open' mode.

I connected a laptop using both wired and wireless methods to the dlink

It got assigned
ip: 192.168.0.1
gw: 192.168.0.0
dhcp: 192.168.0.0
dns: 192.168.0.0

It was able to connect out of the network to the net no problem.

But my mobile phone which is a Samsung Galaxy S running Gingerbread connected to the wifi, it got an address from the dhcp server was assigned the same settings as above but isn't able to connect to the internet. Is there some fundamental difference between the wireless on a handheld device and a wireless adapter in a computer?

Any help or advice would be gratefully accepted.

Thanks,
Niall

Mattofsweden

I don't know if you've just written it wrong but the interface on your PFSense called WiFi are currently assigned an NetID IP.

First valid IP of the subnet 192.168.0.0/24 is 192.168.0.1. 192.168.0.0 is the NetID of the subnet.

Try this:

Assign WiFi interface IP: 192.168.0.1/24
Set DHCP Server to range 192.168.0.101 > 192.168.0.199 for an example (static dedications need too be outside of scope and having some free above and below is always a good idea)

Leaving D-Link on 192.168.0.250 is OK, but make sure it's own gateway point to 192.168.0.1 so you can access it from other subnets.

I got a DIR-655 as W/AP myself with WPA2. MacBook, HTC Desire, Desktop, Work Laptop etc connect like a charm so I see no reason why it won't work for you.

NiallCon

Matt,

Thank you! I don't know what I was thinking using the netid. I changed it to 192.168.0.1 and bingo…my data plan for my phone is safe :)

By the way, there isn't anywhere in the dlink to specify a gateway. You can put in ip and subnet but that's it. But that's ok because I don't need to access any of the other subnets from the wireless....it's really only for internet access.

Thanks once again.
Niall

Mattofsweden

@NiallCon:

There isn't anywhere in the dlink to specify a gateway. You can put in ip and subnet but that's it.

Well. there are two places specify things in your D-Link.

Under "Setup / Network Settings" you specify the DHCP yadda yadda.
Under "Setup / Internet / Manual Setup" you specify the D-Link routers own IP, Subnet, Gateway and DNS on D-Link WAN Interface

Due to your setup the last settings are of course not needed. I was thinking back on my setup and just realized I'm not using the WAN interface on the D-Link either. It would result in triple PAT/NAT onto WAN which just complicates things further :D

You will unfortunately not be able to access the D-Link WebInterface from any other networks/subnets, if you do not setup outbound NAT on the WiFi interface on PFSense, because the D-Link has no idea where to send traffic destined for other networks/subnets.

As a result of this you gotta be connected to the D-Link router with StaticIP falling inside the SubNet used to configure it. Or do your LAN and WiFi Interface on the PFSense box belong to the same SubNet??

It will work like a charm however once setup.

You're welcome btw.

virtualliquid

I just wanted to say, that I had this EXACT same problem, and I did what matt said to do. My opt1 interface was for wifi on 192.168.2.1/24, all laptops would work perfectly with no problems, but I had customers complaining about there android devices not working, a few eee pad transformers and droid OS phones would not work, they would see the access point, get an IP and even show up on my arp table. Once I changed the opt1 interface to 192.168.0.1/24 and the waps ip to 192.168.0.250, everything worked perfectly, thanks for the help :)

Mattofsweden

@NiallCon:

It got assigned
ip: 192.168.0.1
gw: 192.168.0.0
dhcp: 192.168.0.0
dns: 192.168.0.0

@virtualliquid:

My opt1 interface was for wifi on 192.168.2.1/24, all laptops would work perfectly with no problems, but I had customers complaining about there android devices not working, a few eee pad transformers and droid OS phones would not work, they would see the access point, get an IP and even show up on my arp table. Once I changed the opt1 interface to 192.168.0.1/24 and the waps ip to 192.168.0.250, everything worked perfectly, thanks for the help :)

You're welcome, on the other hand I think there's a confusion going on here.

An 192.168.0.0/24 subnet has a valid IP range of 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.254.
192.168.0.0 is the [b]NetID[/b] and not an valid IP to use. "Any" device should error when trying to assign that as an IP. 
192.168.0.255 is the Broadcast IP of that subnet (last existing IP in the subnet) and devices "should" error here also.

Another one:

An 192.168.2.0/23 for example has valid IP range of 192.168.2.1 - 192.168.3.254
192.168.2.0 is the [b]NetID[/b] 
192.168.0.255 is the Broadcast IP.

From what I gathered NiallCon had assigned the NetID to the W/AP interface. By looking at DHCP, GW & DNS IPs provided by the DHCP lease.
I could be wrong, although fiddling about with the ranges solved it for NiallCon in the end.

Your situation is not really the same.


WLAN Subnet 192.168.2.0/24
OPT1 on 192.168.2.1
DHCP Scope of 192.168.2.2 > 192.168.2.254

Should work wonders! My Android devices have no issues with these. Might be a bug in the android version, although seems far fetched.

I got 192.168.253.0/24 on all my devices at home and uplink resides in 192.168.254.0/24 subnet (my landlords LAN).
I use this "uncommon" subnet because it seldom conflicts with subnets I might VPN to. I recommend to use obscure ranges in many cases.

dale58

An 192.168.2.0/23 for example has valid IP range of 192.168.2.1 - 192.168.3.254
192.168.2.0 is the [b]NetID[/b] 
192.168.0.255 is the Broadcast IP.

OK, sorry to nitpick this but if this is truly a 'super-net' of two class C addresses, then the Broadcast address would be 192.168.3.255 not 192.168.0.255. I've heard this called a sub-net of a Class B range or a super-net Class C. Either way you're getting 510 addresses together. Please note that I have seen many of these and "ALWAYS" block (remove) the .254 & .0 addresses (ie: 192.168.2.254 and 192.168.3.0) from DHCP so they are not assigned to devices. Too many times I've run across these addresses and the workstation will not correctly route traffic. Troubleshooting this the first time is no fun.

Mattofsweden

@dale58:

An 192.168.2.0/23 for example has valid IP range of 192.168.2.1 - 192.168.3.254
192.168.2.0 is the [b]NetID[/b] 
192.168.0.255 is the Broadcast IP.
OK, sorry to nitpick this but if this is truly a 'super-net' of two class C addresses, then the Broadcast address would be 192.168.3.255 not 192.168.0.255. I've heard this called a sub-net of a Class B range or a super-net Class C. Either way you're getting 510 addresses together. Please note that I have seen many of these and "ALWAYS" block (remove) the .254 & .0 addresses (ie: 192.168.2.254 and 192.168.3.0) from DHCP so they are not assigned to devices. Too many times I've run across these addresses and the workstation will not correctly route traffic. Troubleshooting this the first time is no fun.

Of course it's 192.168.3.255 that's the BC. I wrote that wrong ;)

You're doing it right on the DHCP. Limit the scope a bit is always a good idea.