Dear all,
I got a wireless link to the Trendnet * Wireless Router to link
up to another machine, as described below. However, I have one
serious difficulty in using DHCP and will start a different
thread for that.

A) To initialise router:
- I used an RJ45 cable to link my laptop to the router. The
router has an initial IP address: 192.168.1.1.
- I change my my laptop's IP address to 192.168.1.3 and its mask
to 255.255.255.0. This is so that both devices are in the same
LAN (as identified by their address)
- From the firefox browser, I open the webpage
http://192.168.1.1, and followed the on-screen instructions to
configure the router. As my preferred LAN is 192.168.0.*, I
changed the router address to 192.168.0.1. (I consequently lost
the connection and had to open the webpage http://192.168.0.1.)
- After some trial and error, I discovered that in order to use
WEP security,  I have to set the router to "open", for the
network (encryption) key to work. DHCP IP addresses issued by
the *router* and fixed IP addresses worked.


B) To initialise wireless connection:
- my laptop has the ipw3945 driver and so I had to activate the
ipw3945d service (daemon) so as to have the eth1 port for
wireless connection. The eth0 is configured for the RJ45 socket
(LAN). However, system-config-network displays only eth0 for
activation, but not eth1. (eth1 is displayed under the hardware
configuration tab, where IRQ etc are set; but I do not need to
do that.)
 
- using iwconfig, I configure the wireless link, like so: 
	# /sbin/iwconfig eth1 essid "doit1wlan" channel 6 rate auto
txpower auto
	# /sbin/iwconfig eth1 key open s:xxxxx
where xxxx is a 5-letter key. I have to use a fixed IP address,
and not DHCP, otherwise, no access to eth1.
- using ifconfig, I activate eth1 to the fixed address
192.168.110 (and default mask 255.255.255.0):
	# /sbin/ifconfig eth1 up 192.168.110
- I then restart the network service for everything to work.

C) Deactivated cards: I seem to have to activate the card I need
and then reactivate the network services (Network Manger service
is not started on my machine). The problem seems to have "gone
away". I will not look at it further unless it resurfaces.

D) Other comments.
I think the main difficulty I encountered, beyond lack of
practical knowledge, arose partly from the fact that I had a
solution forced on me (ie, a router initially obtained for other
purposes) whereas the linux box already had one and just treated
(rightly) the equipment as any other device.
My thanks to all for the assistance; the HOWTO documents were
helpful.


--- William Shu <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear Jim,
> Yes, when using the crossover cable, the gateway is not
> needed.
> Barring prior internet connections in the machine's distant
> past, I have no clue how the gateways may have been obtained.
> All I recognise is that from "/sbin/route -n -v", "doit" is
> alias for 192.168.0.1, as found in /etc/hosts. I am yet to
> look
> at gateway-related issues when I focus on installing the
> wireless router. Then, I will try out the suggestions.
> 
> However, the thorny question now is why does one or the other
> of
> the network cards on the machine not work. This happens
> whether
> or not the cards have different or identical IP addresses! (It
> seems to be a chance game!) Decoding the output of
> "/sbin/ifconfig -a" is not yet obvious to me!
> 
> 
> William. 
> 
> --- Jim McCarthy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> > William --
> > 
> > You wrote:
> > >
> > > Dear all,
> > > 
> > > I finally got the connection over the crossover cable! For
> > > reasons that are beyond me, one of the two network cards
> (on
> > > the desktop machine) becomes "inactive" shortly after
> > activation
> > > under system-network-config. After permuting IP addresses
> > and
> > > network cards, I finally got it working!
> > > 
> > > I am not sure if I had a configuration problem on the
> cards
> > or
> > > one of them is bad/unstable. However, since I also have
> > Redhat
> > > 9.0 on the machine, I am yet to secure an old card (that
> is
> > > known to work under RH9) in order to find out.
> > > 
> > > Nonetheless, I would appreciate if anyone could let me
> know
> > if
> > > the above solution/problem could have been detected by
> > > interpreting the /sbin/ifconfig -a and /sbin/route -v
> > outputs.
> > > 
> > > For the router question, I will give feedback once I turn
> my
> > > attention to it.
> > > 
> > > Many thanks to all for the assistance.
> > > 
> > > William.
> > 
> > I'm just catching up on this thread <sorry if this is old
> > news>.
> > In reviewing your output from /sbin/route on machine
> > "tinys150":
> > 
> > >> [root@tinysl50 wss]#  /sbin/route -v
> > >> Kernel IP routing table
> > >> Destination  Gateway  Genmask     Flags Metric Ref Use
> > Iface
> > >> 192.168.0.0     *    255.255.255.0  U      0    0   0 
> eth0
> > >> 169.254.0.0     *    255.255.0.0    U      0    0   0 
> eth0
> > >> default       doit   0.0.0.0        UG     0    0   0 
> eth0
> > >>
> > 
> > ...the gateway "doit" for the default route looks
> > out-of-place,
> > since with a direct network cable connectionn between two
> SL5
> > machines, you do not have "Domain Name Service" (DNS) to
> > identify
> > an IP address (192.168.0.3) with the name "doit".  Hence I
> > might
> > suggest you try on tiny150:
> > 
> > % /sbin/route del default
> > % /sbin/route add default gw 192.168.0.3 eth0
> > % /sbin/route -v
> > 
> > and likewise on hps150 try:
> > 
> > % /sbin/route del default
> > % /sbin/route add default gw 192.168.0.1 eth0
> > % /sbin/route -v
> > 
> > ... and in the -v output, check that each machine is
> > configured
> > so that the other machine is its default gateway.  Maybe
> this 
> > will help ensure that the two machines communicate reliably
> > via
> > the cross-over network cable ?
> > 
> > Good luck,
> > 
> >     -- Jim McCarthy
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
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