There are always questions popping up regarding network architecture and how to get Prontos working properly. I am limited i what I can advise as I do not use any extenders and talk to all devices using TCP/IP, UDP and often HTTP.

In my home I use wired and wireless. All devices except for the Prontos, and my netbook use wired Ethernet, the pronto's and the netbook use wireless.

The house is a single LAN with no hubs but rather switches which operates at 100 mb/s. Collision rate is very low, error rate is very low, and basic Ethernet wiring rules with regard to span lengths are followed. All wiring is cat 5 as it was done 10 years ago.

There is one master router with four LAN ports and two phone ports as I use VoiP. Each of the four router ports feeds an 8 port switch. Some of the runs from a switch may feed a second level 5 port switch. This was done mostly from a cabling perspective, as I never accurately estimated how many "home runs" I might need. All wired networking gear is by Linksys.

There are Three WAP's in use. One in the Master Bedroom one in The Great Room and one in the Theater. The ones in the Master Bedroom and the Great Room use the same SSID, and the one in the Theater uses another. The Master Bedroom and Great Room units are sold by On-Q but are really ASUS 330g units. The Theater WAP is by Pakedge (model C3) and could probably run the whole house, but it was the last to be installed. The Pronto's have zero issues. I use WEP 128 on all WAPs.

There is a set of interesting papers at the following location. I strongly suggest any Network beginners read them (especially the first one).

[Link: pakedge.com]

Most important rule is to never use wireless on both sides (double hop).

So ok: TSU9600 over wireless->router over wires->switches and devices.
Bad: TSU9600 over wireless->router over wireless->switches and devices.

This also means do not use WDS!

Another important thing is to not use WPA for pronto's. It just takes to long to reconnect after standby. However on most wireless N devices you need WPA and AES (WEP and TKIP is not supported in the N standard). This is why I always create a Virtual WEP128 SSID on my routers/accesspoints for the pronto's while the laptops can connect on WPA2/AES on full N speed.

Best router to buy is TP-Link TL-WR1043ND (also when you need an AP) but load DDWRT firmware on it. It's cheap as hell, has external antenna's, gigabit lan, usb and runs DDWRT like a charm. It's also extremely fast (400MHZ, 142Mbit WAN->LAN, 910Mbit LAN->LAN, 70 MBIT WAN/LAN->WLAN as actual throughput). You need DDWRT not only for stability but also to be able to create a virtual SSID and it also adds the possibilty to run a usb print server. If you're worried about running WEP for the pronto's you can block access to certain devices in the routers firewall. It's not a dual band router, but almost as fast (70 vs 72 Mbit), and while some benchmarks indicate that the Netgear WNDR3700 is much faster from WAN, that's only when it's not simultanious doing anything else (simultanious it reaches 130Mbit [Link: nl.hardware.info]). I've had routers that are 2-6 times more expensive but they all performed roughly the same and gave (much) more trouble.

Speaking of routers giving trouble, I have a problematic network at home. So if I may post something here about it, hoping for some insight, thanks.
Until about a month ago I had a DLINK DSL-504T router/modem running everything nicely, and it had been that way for 18+ months. Plugged in to the DSL-504T LAN ports are:
1. a DLINK DIR-300 WAP that exclusively carries all the Pronto network traffic (a little more on that later);
2. an Apple Airport Extreme base station that handles all the wireless internet traffic from my Macs;
3. A HP Procurve 1810G-8 switch that mostly carries all my Kaleidescape movie server network traffic; and
4. A Vista PC.
Then one day none of the clients on the LAN side could see the internet, but they could all still see each other. Rebooting the DSL-504T always restored the internet connection, but only for a brief period. Whilst the fault was present, the ISP said their exchange could still see my modem on-line and all line test parameters were normal. The suggestion was to replace the DSL-504T for fault finding, and this I did with a new DLINK DSL-2642B.
Same problem. The suggestion then was to take the DSL-2642B back to the retailer and exchange it for another one. This I did, same problem. So that's convinced me it is not a DLINK hardware problem because 3 different devices displayed the same fault.
The ISP remain adamant that there was nothing wrong between their exchange and my modem, and that at all times my modem remained in sync with their exchange. However, with the fault present, I found that I could ping their DNS server at its IP from anywhere on my LAN side and get a reply, but I could not access any web pages when entering a URL in a web browser.
So for the time being I am stuck with no solution, other than to reboot the DSL-2642B up to 20+ times per day to maintain the internet connection. The ISP says there is nothing wrong with my ADSL connection, DLINK says there is nothing wrong with my hardware. Can anyone shed some light on what to try next??

Getting back to my Pronto wireless setup, it is very reliable with the DIR-300. I do not have any wireless security enabled on the Pronto, other than the WAP set to low power and not broadcast its SSID. I figure if the WAP is not broadcasting its SSID there is nobody in range who would be remotely savvy enough to tap into it.

If you enter an absolute IP address into your browser does it get to the site? If that is the case but the Name of the site will not work, then you have a DNS resolution problem. I assume you are using the DNS addresses supplied by the ISP. You might want to try 4.2.2.2 and/or 4.2.2.3 As those are very large, very reliable and very fast DNS machines.

Using the Vista PC connected to the LAN port of the router:
"cmd> ping 198.142.0.51" receives a reply
"cmd> ping www.optusnet.com.au" times out.

If the IP address used in your ping test is that of the site you stated, then I strongly suggest that there is a dns resolution issue between you and your ISP.

You might try changing the DNS entries in your network stack (network properties of the NIC) to the ones I mentioned and see if that changes anything.

Correct. The ping was part of the tests that the ISP tech support agent asked me to do. The result has them stumped. They are now suggesting the problem might be generic to DLINK hardware and are sending me one of their NETGEAR modem/routers to try and replicate the fault. Their thinking has come as a surprise to me, as I would have thought they have many thousands of DLINK modems connected to their network. If it were a problem of this nature then mine wouldn't be an isolated case.

UPDATE: DLINK Tech support have written a firmware for me to load on the device to see if it resolves the DNS issue. That's good tech support!

Interesting. Please post when it all gets resolved.

LOL - I love how this thread which started as an informational thread got hijacked into a problem thread. I sure am glad this site supports search of post bodies as if not, no one would discover this DLink problem.

;-)

I've been waiting for someone to jump in and tell me it's not a good idea to have WiFi security set to NONE on my Pronto network, but nobody has. My internet consumption at home has gone from <2GB/month to >10GB/month over the past year (and we don't stream any video). Just goes to show how increasingly more reliant we're becoming in our day-to-day lives on this internet magic machine. Anyway, I have a non-production DLINK firmware to try but can't load it into the modem until I get back home from work in 3 weeks. I'll advise the outcome then.

im having the EXACT same problem at my place. Dlink router. Cant remember model number off the top of my head but very similar to yours. Worked a treat for the last few months and then all of a sudden, no internet connection. Router web page shows full wan connectivity but ping test to any web address times out.

Reboot router. Voila! Works a treat again! For about 20 minutes. Reboot again, and this time it may work for a minute, and it may work for a day. ISP says no fault at their end. Broderik who are yo with? We are with iinet. Very very frustrating!!

Will be curious as to your outcome.

Since Prontos work very well with WEP128 and it is better than nothing, why not just use WEP128? There are several things you can do to improve your WiFi security the ultimate today being WAP. Unfortunately nothing is totally secure, it is just a matter of time.

We are with Optus. I will try the NETGEAR modem that Optus is sending me, and the firmware that DLINK has sent me. That should shed some light on where the problem is.

One thing I just noticed with my problem which you may want to check with your setup brodericj,

Just got home and tried to browse/connect with my devices. No go. But turned on the desktop pc, went to utorrent and resumed my downloads and they are all downloading fine. Even though I couldnt get online with firefox or IE on the same PC.

Go figure.