WGR101 IP address assignments and firewall working?

[amcrae]

Hey everyone!
I am trying to get a Netgear WGR101 Wireless Travel Router to actually create a firewalled WLAN in a hotel room, as advertised in the product specs.

When I connect the WGR101 to a switch port that is on a 192.168.1.x subnet, it assigns a 192.168.1.x to a laptop that connects wirelessly to the WGR101. The laptop is pingable from other devices connected to the switch unless the laptop's endpoint firewall is turned on!

In other words, the WGR101 firewall does not seem to be protecting devices connected to it wirelessly! So, I don't see how this travel router would actually protect my connected devices in an actual hotel room internet connection scenario. Am I missing something here?

[amcrae]

Further results.

With the WGR101 switch set to position 2 (multiple users), my laptop's wifi adapter was not assigned an IP address by the WGR101 DHCP server nor by the upstream core router.

However, when I assigned a static IP to my laptop's wifi adapter of 192.168.0.x, then I was able to connect to the WGR101 AND get out to the internet.

Another host connected to the same switch was DHCP assigned by the upstream core router an IP of 192.168.1.x, which, of course, cannot ping the laptop connected to the WGR101 (as it is on the 192.168.0.x subnet). This would be the case whether the WGR101's firewall was working on not AFAIK. 

But, the WGR101 WAN port (called Internet Port) which is at 192.168.1.y does not respond to pings from other devices on the same switch with 192.168.1.z addresses so I believe that means that the WGR101 firewall must be working and blocking the pings.

This is what I expected from the WGR101 switch position 1 (Single User) configuration. But it DHCP assigned a 192.168.1.x address to my wifi connected laptop and my laptop was pingable from other devices connected to the upstream switch. The implication being that the DHCP assignment in Single User mode was actually made by the upstream router, not the DHCP server in the WGR101. I guess I'll go ahead and test Single User mode again to see why it didn't hand off the expected 192.168.0.x IP address the first time.

[amcrae]

Well, I got the same results in Single User mode as the first time, so I'll definitely not be using that in a hotel room.

But, I did get a different result in Multiple Users mode this time: the WGR101 assigned a 192.168.0.x IP address to my laptop via its internal DHCP server, so no static assignment of the laptop wifi adapter was required. This is what I was hoping for in both modes, but if it only happens in the Multiple Users mode that is fine with me. Should work fine in a hotel room.

The only remaining concern is that I'm not sure how I could test the WGR101 SPI firewall. Running the GRC firewall test would be meaningless because the upstream router's firewall would be the one really being tested - off course it would pass! Any suggestions of a software tool that could test the WGR101's firewall?