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Network Configuration Problem Involving Router and Firewall IP Addresses?

Here is how our net­work is cur­rently set up:

Internet>Netopia Modem>Sonicwall Fire­wall Box>3Com Board>Server & Workstations

I would like to add a wire­less router some­where in that map so that we can access our net­work and the inter­net wire­lessly with com­pany laptops.

I put the wire­less router I bought both before and after the 3Com Board and the same prob­lem always occurs… all PCs on the net­work lose inter­net access (but not net­work access). Also, it appears that when­ever the wire­less router is hooked up I am not able to access the Son­icwall Fire­wall Box via its IP address (it takes me to the wire­less router’s page instead).

Does any­one know of a way to install this wire­less router onto the net­work, remove the IP address con­flict, and still have inter­net access?

Thanks!
@GTB:
A.1. No, our com­pany paid a high priced con­sult­ing com­pany to set it up.
A.2. I main­tain it to the best of my abil­ity to avoid hav­ing to pay addi­tional sup­port fees to said high priced con­sult­ing com­pany.
A.3. Nope.
A.4. What device should I use?
A.5. The own­ers of the com­pany asked me to do this because of A.2. above.

B.1. Can you explain this?
B.2. This too?
B.3. Same as B.2.
B.4. See A.5.

Thanks!
Clar­i­fi­ca­tion: The 3COM “Board” is a switch­box.
Addi­tional Infor­ma­tion: All ip addresses were man­u­ally assigned.

Related posts:

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  2. Nat Pro­vides Mul­ti­plex­ing and Bol­sters Secu­rity for your Home-​​​​based Com­puter Network
  3. Any­one have any ideas how to fix a net­work problem?
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5 comments to Network Configuration Problem Involving Router and Firewall IP Addresses?

  • GTB
    May 13, 2010 at 8:56 am

    I pre­sume the 3Com board is a 3Com net­work switch.

    I fur­ther pre­sume you have a seri­ous IP address con­flict because you do not under­stand sub­nets. This fur­ther begs these questions:

    1. Did you set up the net­work orig­i­nally?
    2. Are you respon­si­ble for the net­work?
    3. Do you under­stand sub­net­ting?
    4. Why did you use a wire­less router when it is the wrong device for the job?
    5. Do your have per­mis­sion from Man­age­ment to pro­vide wire­less capability?

    I strongly sus­pect the answer to all of the above is NO because a net­work as sophis­ti­cated as yours appears to be has to be run by some­one more fami­aliar with the network.

    Now to answer your questions

    1. There is a sub­net con­flict and prob­a­bly too many DHCP servers which cre­ates chaos.
    2. You must not use a wire­less router — it is the wrong device; pro­cure the proper wire­less device com­pat­i­ble with your net­work
    3. Make sure you have prop­erly con­fig­ured the wire­less device.
    4. Make sure you have man­age­ment approval — or your head may roll.

  • Tracy L
    May 13, 2010 at 9:09 am

    Sounds to me like your Sonic Fire­wall and your router are attempt­ing to use the same LAN IP.. not good and won’t work. If all you really need is wire­less set the router up using an IP (not in the DHCP pool) and con­nect it to the net­work (not using the WAN input) using a LAN input thus mak­ing it an Access point only which will do what you want. Just turn off the DCHP in the router and your good to go.

    You could just use a real Access Point which cre­ates less problems.

  • joe.attaboy
    May 13, 2010 at 9:31 am

    This is dif­fi­cult to answer:

    1. What is the “3COM Board?” I worked in net­work­ing a long time, never heard of one of those.

    2. How are the sys­tems on the net­work get­ting IP addresses assigned to them.

    The prob­lem is prob­a­bly that the router is inter­fer­ing with the fire­wall. The fire­wall is likely doing NAT­ing in the pack­ets mov­ing in and out of the net­work. The router is try­ing to do the same thing, in all likelihood.

    What you should prob­a­bly be doing is putting the router in front of the fire­wall, then set­ting up a direct route between the two devices so that all traf­fice passes through the FW before hit­ting the network.

    That’s the best I can do based on the infor­ma­tion you provided.

  • Stephen Dugan
    May 13, 2010 at 10:15 am

    What you need to do is…

    First move the Wire­less router and attach it to the 3Com switch. The “Inter­net Port” on the wire­less router is the port that needs to be con­nected to the 3Com switch.

    The son­icwall needs to have a sta­tic address allo­cated for the new router.

    On the wire­less router con­fig­ure the wired port with the sta­tic address you allo­cated. Cre­ate a default route and point it to the son­icwall. You will also have to con­fig­ure DNS based on you cur­rent settings.

    The wire­less router also needs to pro­vide addresses for the wire­less clients to use on the net­work. You need to cre­ate a DHCP pool for that on the wire­less router. Make cer­tain that the IP DHCP pool that the wire­less router is using for the wire­less clients is not the same as the IP net­work address for the wired. For exam­ple… If the wired clients are 192.168.1.0/24 use 192.168.2.0/24 on the wire­less router.

    Lastly you need to make the son­icwall aware of the new sub­net. Cre­ate a sta­tic route on the son­icwall to the new sub­net. For exam­ple if the DHCP pool you cre­ated on the wire­less router is 192.168.2.0/24, you would need to route to that with a next hop of the sta­t­i­cally allo­cated address of the wire­less router.

    Hope this helps,

    Stephen Dugan, CCSI

    PS. You are cre­at­ing a HUGE secu­rity issue here IF you do not con­fig­ure encryp­tion (don’t use WEP its bro­ken) on the wire­less router. All of the wire­less users are behind you fire­wall and will have access to your inter­nal data. This is the equiv­a­lent of putting an Eth­er­net port in your park­ing lot. DON’T do any of this until after you have wire­less secu­rity turned on.

  • Jeremy Aytes
    May 24, 2010 at 2:09 pm

    I was just brows­ing for related blog posts for my project research and I hap­pened to dis­cover yours. Thanks for the excel­lent information!

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