Linksys WRT54G / Fujitsu Lifebook S-series interoperability issues

Greetings, gurus.

My fiancée and I have a small LAN configured at home which is connected to the internet (Virgin Media, a UK Cable ISP) via a Linksys WRT54G wireless router.

It's been fine and dandy for nearly 2 years with two wired (two gaming machines -- one XP Pro, one XP 64 Pro) and two wireless clients (one "general use" PC running XP Pro and a CCTV server machine running XP 64 Pro) permanently attached to it. She and I both also have corporate laptops which, on occasions when we work from home, are also used via wireless.

Both corporate laptops run XP Pro and are (in the office) members of the corporate domain.

Until recently, we both had HP lappies -- she an nc6000 and myself an nc4200, both of which connected fine.

Then our company replaced her HP with a Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook S and the problems began. In short, the F-S lappie (with its Intel Wireless Pro 3945ABG chipset) will only get a DHCP-allocated IP address from the router if the router's "AP-Isolation" mode is enabled.

Curiously, the actual radio link is being established, something that can be verified by checking the router's status page and seeing the F-S' MAC address as registered, it just will not get an IP address.

Putting the AP into "isolation" mode would not be a problem were it not for the fact that one of the permanently connected wireless clients is a machine we use for CCTV monitoring of our property.

This machine is a generic desktop machine with a JBOD array within and connects, wirelessly, using a Belkin 802.11g PCI card that I happened to have knocking around. As soon as I enable the "AP isolation" function of the router I (by design) can no longer remotely connect to that client using VNC.

One solution would be to provide a wired connection to the CCTV box, however, this is simply not practical in our home as it'd mean running CAT5 all over the place, something I'd rather avoid.

Moreover, I'd rather get to the root of the problem with the F-S machine being the only device that has any difficulty connecting.

Any ideas?

Many thanks,

Rik.

Is your WRT54G one of those with SES? What happens if you disable SES?
Are you using the Intel utility to manage the wireless card or Windows?
Do you have the latest Intel driver installed?

Hi Rob, yes, it is.

I've had SES disabled from the get-go.

WZC only -- in my experience, the Intel tools are a little flaky and are resource hogs. If there's some valid thinking behind using them instead, I'll grab a copy from Intel.

Will need to check later when I get home, however, I suspect not. Intel have the usual "go see your vendor as we've no control over what the heck they've done to our perfect chipset" attitude {/cynical} however, F-S' website is notoriously difficult to find stuff on (today being no different than the last time I searched) so I've bagged a "reference" set from Intel anyway.

Cheers, Rik.

The F-S web-site has the driver dated at 27/09/06 ver 10.05.1.68 for XP
The Intel site lists ver 11.5.0.32/9.0.4.37 dated 11/7/2007

Clearly F-S' website was having a dizzy spell when I was attempting to interrogate it yesterday afternoon

The version you cite is indeed newer than the one that was already installed on our lappie and I'll have another go today at grabbing it from F-S' site to see if that helps.

...which is the one I snagged and tried last night, sadly, to no avail.

I also unearthed this snippet which suggests there are some power-management mode-related issues with this chipset and certain (unspecified) APs, however this proved fruitless, also.

I then spent a little while last night reflashing the router with a stable release of DD-WRT (V23 SP2) to see if that improved things at all, again, it didn't. I had been using the genuine Linksys v4.x version, previously.

What has become apparent is that we have neighbours with a shiny new BT Homehub (Thomson hardware...?) on channel 11 as well as someone else nearby with an unknown AP, also on channel 11... I've forced our router onto channel 6 in response but I'm wondering if the general amount of 2.4GHz traffic is an issue and that our WRT54GS is getting stomped by our neighbours..?

Cheers for now, Rik.

F-S driver
Service & Support - Fujitsu Siemens Computers

If your other wireless devices work OK I can't see it being an interference issue. Have you tried the laptop at a "wireless hotspot" or use a friends network to see if it works? It may eliminate your home network.
Since it is a works laptop I presume you are using it for VPN access. Is the VPN client s/ware on the FS laptop different from your other laptop?

I got a USB WiFi dongle for mine (you can have that AND built in wireless on the same machine, mine was a fuji lifebook c series, dongle was about $30, worked fine and quickly, wasn't worth putzing with it when I could make it work for less than the cost of eatng out)