In this modern Internet world of malware infections sometimes what seems to be something ends up being different than what you thought. A perfect example of this is a problem that I received a service call for this past week.
The customer of ours at Winterhoff Internet Solutions was complaining that she could not get email or her banking website to work, but the rest of the Internet seemed to be working fine. The first thing that came to my mind was a BHO or LSP infection from some form of malware on her PC. But wait, it was affecting all 3 pc's of her home office but not the wireless laptop, and everything worked fine a day ago.
The Basic Diagnostics
Now she has my attention. Since I installed her network I know that she has a Road Runner cable account, one Linksys wireless router and a Netgear Prosafe router behind that to separate her home network from her business network. Being the big fan of OpenDNS that I am, I was sure I set the Netgear to use the OpenDNS servers. Maybe that was the issue, I thought to myself. A simple ping test proved that was not the problem. I could ping from any PC on the business network to any of the websites that were failing. I could even ping the POP and SMTP servers that were timing out. So all I know is that to some IP addresses port 25, 80, 110 are not being routed correctly.
Getting Serious
I’m now kind of bummed out, because I can go no further without going on site to reset or flash the routers to see if they are causing the issue. When I got there I power cycled the network equipment and nope...that did not fix it. Then I started checking logs: the Linksys is routing they way I expect it to, but the Netgear never received the packet.
What Went Wrong
My eureka moment, it’s got to be the bridge! Originally the client did not want any cables run from the wireless router upstairs and the business network downstairs. So the solution was a wireless bridge (which worked well for five months). The Linksys Wireless Bridge WET610N set up was pretty smooth the first time so I flashed it with the updated firmware, but the problem still persisted even after I re-set it.
The Fix
It only took 30 minutes the next day to relocate the wireless router and cable modem to an adjacent room downstairs, and run 50 feet of Cat5e cable.
Lessons learned: don’t buy a Linksys Wireless Bridge WET610N, and next time just keep on insisting that we run the cable! Also Cisco - Linksys does not offer refunds on the junk they sell.
