To refresh my original post,
We added a WAP54G to our office to accommodate customers who come in & need
to use their laptops. We're using WEP & have broadcasting turned on. We have
a DHCP server on the LAN to pass out IP addresses to customers & customers
laptops are set to get a dhcp address. Anyone who works here & has a domain
account can log in to the domain, get an IP address & everything works fine.
Anyone else can't. What's happening is if you place the curser over the
network tray, it will say "Connected to 'wireless_network', signal strength
excellent", but computer is getting a 169.254.x.x address. I actually had
one laptop get a dhcp address, after the computer had been on about 15
minutes, but couldn't connect to or ping anything.
Am I missing something here?

After getting a few replies, I've turned WEP off, turned on broadcasting & I
can get an IP address via a DHCP server on our network, but I can't get on
the Internet! DHCP is set to pass out gateway address & dns server info. The
DNS seerver is passes out is our internal dns server which forwards to our
ISPs dns servers. If I try to ping anything on our network, it times out. I
can try to ping a server by name & it will come back with "pinging server1
[192.168.10.200]...", but will time out! I can ping external (real world) IP
addresses & get a reply, but can't ping websites by name. If I try to
connect to a network share, whether by mapping a network drive (while
connecting with a domain account & password), or via run>\\Server1\share, I
get a "Network path can't be found".
Any advice appreciated-

Use tracerouter (or Windoze tracert) to guess where the packets are
going.  Also, dump the Windoze route table with:
  route print | more
to see where your DHCP server is telling the clients to go. 

Ok.  Are these being delivered correctly?  Use:
  ipconfig
to see what you're getting from the DHCP server.

Incidentally, any chance this DHCP server is a Windoze 2003 server?
If so, there is a rather complex security pretzel available that
assigns temporary IP addresses to DHCP clients that work only long
enough for them to be authenticated by the PDC.  I won't pretend to
understand how to configure it.

That's normal.  Do your initial troubleshooting by IP address, not by
name.  For example, to surf the web, use:
  http://IP-address-of-web-server
instead of the usual web server name and domain.

Anything?  Try the wireless access point IP address, the router IP
address, and whatever you're using for DHCP server.  Also try pinging
your own assigned IP address.  See if there's a pattern.  I had one of
my friends waste an entire day trying to troubleshoot an internal
static route problem that turned out to be forgetting to disarm or
configure an exception in his laptops Norton Firewall.

Stop testing by name.  Is 192.168.10.200 the IP address of this
server?  If so, try pinging it by IP address.  If that fails, run:
  tracert 192.168.10.200
to see where the packets are trying to go.  If that fails, then run:
  route print | more
and see where your client wants to send packets.

Ok, so now we get down to the problem.  You're nameservice is busted
or malfunctional.  In the future, please start with the problem you're
trying to solve and add the evidence after that, not the reverse
order.  It makes easier reading.

Instead of \\Server1 which should deliver a list of available shares,
try running:
  \\192.168.10.200
which should do that same thing.  If that works, your DNS is busted.

Assuming a Windoze system, I use Sam Spade to troubleshoot DNS
problems.  For Unix, try "host", "dig", and "dnslookup" commands.
  http://www.samspade.org/ssw/download.html
Download and install.  You can get a really good idea of how a lookup
works by using the "dig" button.  Under "options -> miscellaneous"
turn on "query all authoritative servers" to get buried in
troubleshooting info.

I don't know what's wrong with your DNS, but I can offer a guess(tm)
based on past experience.  ISP's like to change DNS server IP's.  Your
in house DNS server might have an old IP address.  Also, I've seen
admins populate the server hosts files with static name-IP pairs to
speed up common lookups.  See if there's anything odd in hosts and
lmhosts.

For starters, yes, this is a Windows 2003 server. All settings under ipconfig /all are correct. These are the same settings on all other client computers & dns, etc., works fine on them. Where might I start on that "rather complex security pretzel" as far as 2003 is concerned? This would also explain alot of the "well, it used to work" statements that I've been hearing. Jeez! Windows 2003 is really looking like more trouble that it was worth! -- mikey117 brought to you by http://www.wifi-forum.com/

On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 20:59:08 GMT, mikey117
<mikey117.1lhptn@WiFi-Forum_dot_com> wrote:

I'll add another notch in my keyboard for astute guesswork.

OK.  Methinks we're on the right track.  Did you run the DNS test to
see if it's even able to do a DNS lookup?  My guess is that the
lookups will fail do to the inability to access the DNS servers on the
internet.

Notice that I indicated that I didn't know anything about Windoze
2003.  One of my customers ladyfriend is the admin at a local
manufactory that uses Windoze 2003.  That entitled me to helping her
setup a Netgear something VPN router with a Windoze 2003 server
delivering all the IP addresses via DHCP.  The symptoms were
identical.  DHCP would deliver a valid IP address through the VPN, but
nothing would work until after one authenticated with the server.
Since I wasn't present and didn't even look at the Windoze 2003
server, I really don't know what to tell you.  I'll dive back into
some of the email to see if there are any useful clues.

No sympathy.  It's a feature, not a bug.

Personally, I think it's a nifty idea.  Deliver a useless IP address
so that the client can authenticate and don't let them do anything
useful until the PDC says it's ok.  A good way to do security.
Methinks it's worth doing battle with Windoze 2003 to make this thing
work.

Digging through my email, I found:
   (...)
   The problem was not with the Netgear it was the W2K3 Domain Server.
   2K3 routing and remote access server was confused as to who was
   assigning IP address to the remote computers.

   The W2K3 server was set up to let the Netgear assign IP addresses
   for both internal and remote computers.  Since I could not figure
   out how to get the Netgear assign IP address for remote computers
   (I played with all the possible number fields), I found in the
   routing and remote access server settings to let our network server
   assign the remote IP addresses (I used a different IP scheme for
   the remote computers).

It's not exactly the same issue, but it might be a clue.  She also
mentions a page on the Windoze 2003 server that limits access by a
range of IP address.  It's usually set to allow the entire /24 IP
block, but might be limited for some reason.

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