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Gromit · 09:03 PM

Originally Posted by Scott O.

Users are moving their laptops from "wired" to "wireless" and back to "wired", but the laptops are hanging onto their "wireless" connection even though they are plugged back into the wired network. (The connection has to be manually ended by the user) Its causing capacity problems and it gets better...if enough people do that in a building, they tap out out all of the available 256 IP addresses on the VLAN (where I have isolated the wireless traffic). The "lease" period on an address was 3 days and I have just shortened it to 12 hours to see if that will help allow addresses to re-enter the range faster...ok enough about my anguish...

Hey Scott

Does the 1200 have an auto disconnect option for unused connections?
Have you looked into any software/utils which can disconnect after a length of inactivity or even any power saving options like you have on PDA's?

So as not to hijack this thread, we can start a new thread on this and work together to try and come up with a solution. I like something to get me teeth into and I'm likely to be having the same issue in our organisation which will be worse for us as the wireless is a separate network with a connection to the net!!:o thus breaching security in a fairly huge way.

Let me know..

Scott O.

This is a work issue:

Users are moving their laptops from "wired" to "wireless" and back to "wired", but the laptops are hanging onto their "wireless" connection even though they are plugged back into the wired network. (The connection has to be manually ended by the user) Its causing capacity problems and it gets better...if enough people do that in a building, they tap out out all of the available 256 IP addresses on the VLAN (where I have isolated the wireless traffic). The "lease" period on an address was 3 days and I have just shortened it to 12 hours to see if that will help allow addresses to re-enter the range faster

I have a call into Cisco to ask Gromit's questions about auto disconnect but looking at the device specs I still haven't found anything like that.

Gromit

Hi Scott

I've been looking into this since you raised it in the other thread for TKS
http://www.pchelpforum.com/newreply....ote=1&p=121996

Haven't managed to turn up too much yet. I'm looking for a utility or an option to disconnect the connection if unused. The only problem here is that the connection may still register that it's in use as there is an 'automatic metric' feature used in WinXP for IP routes which seems to calculate the best route dependant on initiation etc...

I'll keep going and keep you posted.

Gromit

Gromit · 07:21 PM

One thing to rule out:

Originally Posted by TechNet, CableGuy

At this time, computers running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 do not have the capability to automatically disable the wireless network adapter when the Ethernet adapter is plugged into a network and to automatically enable the wireless network adapter when the Ethernet adapter is unplugged. If you do not want simultaneous connections to both wired and wireless networks, you must manually enable and disable the connection to the wireless network, the procedure for which varies with different releases of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Oh well

I'll keep looking for other options.

Gromit

Gromit

Having had a scour around TechNet one bit of advice was to change the route metric on the wireless default gateway to a lower value than the wired one. This will loose you connectivity with any remote subnets on your wired LAN. You'd need to add static routes to those, if there are any.

Let us know if you're able to try this and if so, does it work?

Scott O.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/network/p70008/EN/props.htm#toc_70

We'll see where that takes us.

Another note, purely informational:

It occurs to me that in this particular building, I have 9 Cisco 1200s installed. If I say that the "typical" session cap per AP is 25 (or 225 addresses required), I am pretty close to the Class C limit of 254, meaning, that despite the inefficiency of the clients' address usage, or failure to "give back" the addresses, I still am running the risk of maxing out the Class C.

So now my forward thinking notion of isolating all of the WLAN on its own VLAN has to be reconsidered. If I add another VLAN, what criteria for usage assignment will be most efficient. There will be bleed thru between floors and there is a lot of movement during the day of users from one part of the building to another. How do I efficiently allow roaming without ending sessions abruptly when the user moves outside of the range of the VLAN that first assigns the address?

(I better enlist the smart guys on my team for this one)

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