WNCE2001 inappropriately providing DHCP connections

And it's the same issue here too. I have this hooked up to an ethernet HP laserjet 2450 printer so that it acts as a wireless device thru my FIOS Actiontec router. It definitely hijacks my wireless devices by issuing DHCP addresses to them and they cannot connect to the internet either. I have to unplug the WNCE when not in use so that my laptops use DHCP thru the Actiontec router.
The WNCE has been set up as with a static ip address of 192.168.1.251 and it works fine for the HP printer when it is in use. However, when the HP is not being used, the WNCE takes over my home network and assigns its own DHCP addresses.

I thought I was crazy until I ran into this problem this week. Normally my wnce2001 is off except for a few hours a day, but recently I've been leaving it on 24/7 and it is giving out an address to my Wife's laptop. The address is completely out of the range that my DHCP server uses and my WiFi access point does not give out addresses.

I'm at the latest version of the firmware and I don't know what else to do.

The odd thing is that the device that is physically connected to the wnce2001 still gets a valid IP from my _real_ dhcp server and works correctly. The LAN settings in the wnce2001 show that the DHCP server is ON and it has a 192.168.1.251 address.

This bites!

I have also run into this issue.

Hardware version 1
Firmware V1.0.0.26

It does seem to be that if the LAN port is down for a length of time it will revert to its setup mode and start acting as a dhcp server. After a power cycle the dhcp server will be off.

The device is not really fit for purpose while it has this fault.

After one week of running smoothly with 1 device we had the same error again.
All (DHCP-)clients in the network are provided with 192.168.1.251 as the standard gateway and are therefor not able to access the internet because a different IP range is configured.

It seems like the WNCE2001 lost the WLAN-connection somehow or did a reset.
Because when I try to access the internet with a client with the wrong standard gateway I am forwarded to the setup assistant of the WNCE2001.
So it fits the description by wires76.

Firmware V1.0.0.26 - so no chance of updating the firmware version.

The device(s) are not really worth the money with this fault behaviour.

I am having exactly this issue with the WNCE2001 (firmware V1.0.0.26) and have to leave it switched off when I'm not using the TV it's plugged into. Which is rather a pain, to say the least. Did anyone ever get a fix for this?

Many thanks...!

Sounds like no one has a solution. A shame, as I've always trusted Netgear products up to this point. However, I can only agree with...

wires76 wrote:
The device is not really fit for purpose while it has this fault.

Thakira wrote:
The device(s) are not really worth the money with this fault behaviour.

...and conclude there is a fundamental flaw with this product that not so much renders it useless, as every other machine on the network! I think I will have to get in touch with Netgear directly.

I have found a possible answer why but not a solution: see this link http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3659/netgear_wnce2001_universal_wifi_internet_adapter/index3.html and could it be that Netgear has not removed the setting switch properly from the hardware?? I do not believe that one can access the switch without opening the case! I visited the other product website and they show the user manual and one can set the box to router or client and AP modes! Behaviour just as you described!! I have a Netgear one but it works fine for me!

Hi!
Got my little box a week ago and it still is working. Have not set it to full use yet. It will run 24/7 so we will se how that works out

Made som observations that might help someone.

The box does for suse contain a DHCP server that serves 192.168.1.0/24 network. It is from my understanding only in use during initial setup. Aftre that it will be off.
When box is setup and connected it will acuire a ip for itself from your standard DHCP server so you can access the advanced config interface/webserver in the box. You can access this from anywhere in you local network if you now the ip. The www.mywifiext.net can only be used from the connected computer which means that the box does some sort of DNS intervention for this to work. The connected computer gets the dns server info from the DHCP setup and that does for sure not contain any info on the URL :-)

Furthermore i tested to disconnect the computer and after a couple of minutes the box disonnects from my AP and the red lamp lights up on the box. When reconnecting the cable it reconnects to my AP and we have green lights again and ok connections.

Hope this can be usefull for someone.

always_black wrote:

Hi! Got my little box a week ago and it still is working. Have not set it to full use yet. It will run 24/7 so we will se how that works out Made som observations that might help someone. The box does for suse contain a DHCP server that serves 192.168.1.0/24 network. It is from my understanding only in use during initial setup. Aftre that it will be off. When box is setup and connected it will acuire a ip for itself from your standard DHCP server so you can access the advanced config interface/webserver in the box. You can access this from anywhere in you local network if you now the ip. The www.mywifiext.net can only be used from the connected computer which means that the box does some sort of DNS intervention for this to work. The connected computer gets the dns server info from the DHCP setup and that does for sure not contain any info on the URL :-) Furthermore i tested to disconnect the computer and after a couple of minutes the box disonnects from my AP and the red lamp lights up on the box. When reconnecting the cable it reconnects to my AP and we have green lights again and ok connections. Hope this can be usefull for someone.

One other thing that came up in my mind. I wonder if the box get confused if you are using the 192.168.1.0 network back home i.e the same as the internal DHCP server use? I do not. Could be interesting to know what is used when members here have problems. Due to the large number of problems there has to be some commonly used setup that triggers this nasty bug.

Yes, I have the problem that everyone else here has talked about. Mercifully, when my REAL DHCP server is active everyone gets an IP address from it and everyone is happy, but if I happen to turn off the computer running the DHCP server then everyone starts coming up with the bogus IP addresses in the 192.168.1.0 subnet with the bogus gateway at 192.168.1.251. I just gave everyone static IP addresses which is a workaround that I haven't seen mentioned here. It's not a particularly good workaround because if anyone picks up their computer and leaves they will not be able to connect to any hot-spots on the road because of their static IP. But it is a workaround that mostly works for me.

Here is my theory of what is happening, and why it is so problematical (hard for NetGear to fix):

The essential quality of the WNCE2001 that makes this such a knotty problem is the design spec that you can connect this with an ethernet cable to the Ethernet port of a computer and the computer will automatically configure itself to the subnet of the WNCE2001. That makes configuration doable for non-techies. Connect it to your computer and bingo, you see the configuration page (I'm not even sure you need to browse to the www.mywifiext.net since the WNCE2001 configures itself as the gateway.) However, this means that whenever the WNCE2001 senses the Ethernet cable being unplugged, it has to assume that what it is plugged into next will be a computer wanting to configure it and it has to turn on the internal (rogue) DHCP server. Ideally, this DHCP server would only serve to the wired connection, however, I suspect that due to the way this tries to act as a pass-through device it has trouble distinguishing between wired packets and unwired packets and it ends up responding to DHCP requests from the unwired side.

My theory doesn't explain why this problem doesn't seem to disconnect the device wired to the WNCE2001. The assumption would be that when you turn off your TV the WNCE2001 would then switch to the DHCP mode and give it an address in the 192.168.1.0 subnet. This does not seem to happen as far as I can tell.

Although I have some inclination to take this as evidence that NetGear has finally gone over to the dark side, I'm trying to see how this could be amenable to some other interpretation. It seems that they may not have designed this product. They got it from another manufacturer to fill a gap in their product line-up. This caused them to be too quick to the market place and after the product was out they uncovered this fatal flaw that firmware can't fix.

Does anyone have any indications as to whether the WNCE3001 has this problem?