Wireless internet broken when bridged

On an XP machine, I have an active ethernet and wireless connection. The computer gets its internet connection from the wireless. When I bridge the two connections I cannot ping or nslookup anything at all including private and public IP addresses. I checked the bridge config and it has an IP correctly assigned by my DHCP server with all correct gateway and DNS settings.

Why would all wireless functionality break just by bridging the connections?

I can give my whole network topology if necessary, but I wondered if this were something simple I've overlooked.

edit: no firewall involved.

hmm i take it they ip address of the wireless and wired are different and on the same subnet or the subnet mask is such that subnet a can see subnet b
i.e 192.168.1.x & 192.168.2.x mask 255.255.253.0 or something like.
it has 1 gateway as which is same for both I'm thinking it's trying to do a lookup and failing as it's getting confused (it's XP not hard).

192.168.1.x and 192.168.2.x are different subnets and subnet mask should probs be set to 255.255.255.0. Why use bridging?

The wireless connection before bridging has:

IP address 192.168.2.1
Subnet 255.255.255.0
Gateway 192.168.2.5 (FreeBSD server)

The wired connection before bridging has:

IP address 192.168.0.1
Subnet 255.255.255.0
Gateway blank

The wired connection is to an Xbox 360 which has an IP address of 192.168.0.2. At the moment, the Xbox 360 gets its internet connection from the XP box using ICS. Bridging requires that you disable ICS beforehand, which I am doing. However, as far as I can tell this has nothing to do with the Xbox. The fact of the matter is that as soon as I bridge the two connections on the XP box, I can't ping anything, including private network addresses (like the FreeBSD server).

Once the bridge is made, it gets an IP address from the DHCP daemon on the FreeBSD server. For instance, it has been 192.168.2.255 and still unable to ping 192.168.2.5. This is what I don't understand.

I even tried this same thing on a laptop connected in the same way, and the same thing happens. Can't ping anything. :confused:

edit: Just to be clear, the Xbox 360 works just fine like this online, that's not my problem. I want to bridge the connections instead of using ICS and I can't understand why it breaks all network connectivity on the XP box.

Any ideas? This is really bothering me. :bang:

Have you actually checked and made sure you disabled the ics in the "services" panel ? Restarted more than once? Make sure they all have the same dhcp/dns server address.
Why are you bridging? Surely, if the xbox has a fixed ip range (don't know about xboxes) the Free BSD server can have that range or a fixed path added to it's scope?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shish

Have you actually checked and made sure you disabled the ics in the "services" panel ? Restarted more than once? Make sure they all have the same dhcp/dns server address.

Yes, yes and yes.

XP doesn't let you bridge connections if one of them has ICS enabled, so I know that is definitely not a problem here.

Quote:

Why are you bridging? Surely, if the xbox has a fixed ip range (don't know about xboxes) the Free BSD server can have that range or a fixed path added to it's scope?

The Xbox is on a different subnet to the FreeBSD server. Xbox is 192.168.0.2, FreeBSD gateway is 192.168.2.5. They are not directly connected. The Xbox gets its internet connection through the XP box with ICS:

Router -(wired to)-> FreeBSD server -(wireless to)-> XP box -(wired to)-> Xbox

I'm wanting to use bridging as an alternative to ICS in this situation because ICS's own port forwarding is broken for me. Multiple people with a setup like this have reported success with bridging, but also there seem to be a bunch with symptoms like me.

Any reason you can't change the 360's subnet ?

I had mine as 192.168.1.x.

What do your routes look like on the XP box?

route print

Bok

Not familiar with FreeBSD but if you are running a normal type network and dhcp you will need to add the xbox to the scope on the FreeBSD or add it as a fixed route. The server may be seeing the 2 addresses as separated or (can't remember my terms but) listed together in the packets. I'm presuming you know what a scope is? Bridging on XP is a pain at the best of times. I have used it before but only when I needed it for bridging wired subnets Checking the routing tables may give you a pointer as Bok says.

Code:

=========================================================================== Interface List 0x1 ........................... MS TCP Loopback interface 0x10003 ...xx xx xx xx xx xx ...... VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter 0x10004 ...xx xx xx xx xx xx ...... Realtek RTL8187 Wireless 802.11b/g 54Mbps US B 2.0 Network Adapter =========================================================================== =========================================================================== Active Routes: Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.2.5 192.168.2.1 25 127.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 1 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.1 20 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.255 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 20 192.168.0.255 255.255.255.255 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.1 20 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.2.1 192.168.2.1 25 192.168.2.1 255.255.255.255 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 25 192.168.2.255 255.255.255.255 192.168.2.1 192.168.2.1 25 224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.1 20 224.0.0.0 240.0.0.0 192.168.2.1 192.168.2.1 25 255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.1 1 255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 192.168.2.1 192.168.2.1 1 Default Gateway: 192.168.2.5 =========================================================================== Persistent Routes: None

Why would changing the Xbox's subnet make a difference to whether I can ping the FreeBSD server from the XP box? The Xbox can be turned off for all I care, it makes no difference.

Shish: I'm not familiar with scope or why the FreeBSD server needs to know about the Xbox if the XP box is handling the packet routing when it gets that far. The FreeBSD box isn't routing packets straight to the Xbox because they need to go through the XP box first. Or am I missing something?

Hopefully you can interpret something useful from the output above.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpha

Why would changing the Xbox's subnet make a difference to whether I can ping the FreeBSD server from the XP box? The Xbox can be turned off for all I care, it makes no difference.

I haven't really looked at your routes yet, but what I was meaning by this was if you can change the subnet you could then do without bridging at all by connecting the 360 directly to your network.. is there a reason not to do that?

Yeah, the official Xbox wireless adapter is absurdly expensive. The Xbox is too far away from any device other than my XP box to wire into the network.

Otherwise, definitely - it would be a hell of a lot simpler to connect straight up.