I have a question about the Minitar 802.11b access points.

We have always found some sites where we cannot get dhcp
offers and response back through the minitar 802.11b AP
(in station infrastructure mode) using firmware version 2.49 and
below.

The latest firmware 2.53 has a feature "Clone Mac".
On one site using Cisco Access points and Minitar access points in
station infrastructure mode. If we leave the "Clone Mac" setting at
all zeros we cannot get a dhcp offer. If we set the clone mac to the
mac address of our ethernet device the dhcp offer gets through.
What exactly does the Clone Mac feature do? Is it possible to
make clone mac automatic ?

Thanks
Paul

Hi there,

There were issues with DHCP relay in 2.49 and below that are resolved in 2.53.

Clone MAC makes the WLAN MAC address of the MNWAPB appear to be the same as the MAC address of the client PC that is wired to the MNWAPB. This is useful if you have MAC address filtering on your AP's - it allows you to just enter in the single MAC of the client instead of having to get the client to work out the MAC of the MNWAPB.

Unfortunatly this cannot be enabled by default as most people do not want this functionality.

I cannot see how using Clone MAC would solve your DHCP relay issues if you are running 2.53 everywhere though - unless it's something specific with the Cisco hardware in your configuration.

S.

I have ethernet capture that show the dhcp request leave our device and
there is no response back. However if the mac is set in clone mac
then the dhcp offer response is seen. Something somewhere is stops
either the dhcp request or the dhcp response. I'd like to be able to capture
the RF side but that is not possible with the equipment we have.

CISCO AP -----Wireless-------- Minitar (station infra) ---+---- Ethernet Device


+ = Capture

Can't seem to reproduce this - is it the Cisco AP that is acting as the DHCP server or do you have a DHCP server attached to the ethernet side of the AP.

S.

Isn't the Clone MAC feature used mainly to hack into networks that use MAC filtering?

Im sure some people probably use it for that as well - if they wanted to use a MNWAPB instead of just a standard PCMCIA wireless card (guess you would probably get more range using a MNWAPB in client mode).

It's main use though is for CPE's where you want all data leaving that network to have the source MAC rewritten to the MAC listed.

S.

Here is the biggest reason for the Clone MAC feature:

Pre V2.53, this did not work:
PC---[MNWAPB AP].....[MNWAPB Client]-----[Router]-----[Internet]

The PC could not see past the router....as it was being told that the MAC address of the Router interface was that of the MNWAPB-Client.

With V2.53, if you set the Clone MAC feature on, and enter the MAC address of the router into the MNWAPB-Client....bingo! PC can see the Internet.

This fix has been the single biggest benefit to me. It enabled me to remove a number of horrible kludges (VPN tunnels) to get around this.

would the clone mac thing work for a setup like this...

PPPoE Dailer ____ MinitarAP ------------ MinitarClient____ADSL modem in bridge mode.

with this setup, i could never use get a connection to the internet, i could ping the modem etc, just not use it. in the minitar client, if i were to put in the mac addess of the modem, would this then work?

PPPOE packets will not traverse an AP in a station-mode, only AP's in bridging modes. So that configuration wouldn't work.

S.