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Hi Experts!

I have a linksys wireless router with four ethernet ports

As soon as I turn the wireless adapter on my laptop on, it acquires an IP address immediately
I have also connected my laptop to the router through an Ethernet cable, which has another IP address

When I give the ipconfig command, it gives two IP addresses, one for my wireless adapter and the other for the Ethernet LAN card

When I see the network and sharing window, it gives the diagram showing the path to internet

Laptop -->Multiple networks-->Internet

Which adapter is used for the internet? I am confused

How to verify that. Please answer this

Regards
Vijay

pls help me

traceroute

How will tracert help us here?
When I ping any site, say www.google.com, it will go through default gateway, which is the same configured on LAN adapter as well as WLAN adapter. How do we find out which adapter is used? What is the way?

In my previous company, when I am accessing internet through WLAN and as soon as I plug the ethernet cable, the WLAN adapter goes down and
LAN adapter gets activated. But why are both active now at home?

Please clarify

Regards
Vijay

How will tracert help us here?
When I ping any site, say www.google.com, it will go through default gateway, which is the same configured on LAN adapter as well as WLAN adapter. How do we find out which adapter is used? What is the way?

In my previous company, when I am accessing internet through WLAN and as soon as I plug the ethernet cable, the WLAN adapter goes down and
LAN adapter gets activated. From this what we understand is wired LAN being faster, takes over.
But why are both active now at home?

Please clarify

Regards
Vijay

[ristau5741]

your LAN adapter and WLAN adapter cannot have same IP address
otherwise you have bigger issues at hand.

Are your adapters bridged together?

I domt know what bridged means/ your LAN adapter and WLAN adapter cannot have same IP address
otherwise you have bigger issues............... I domt know what bridged meansues at hand. but yes, they have different IP addresses

[ristau5741]

traceroute will tell you the path packets flow, as Dan- stated above.

You can always whip up a Wireshark session

Thanks ristau and Dan

Kind ATTN: ristau5741
Yes, the LAN adapter and WLAN adapters have different IP addresses
I know that tracert will tell us the path, but as I mentioned earlier, both LAN and WLAN adapters have the same default gateway
When I do a tracert, it goes through the same default gateway. How do we find out which adapter is used?

Kind ATTN: Dan

Are your adapters bridged together? I don't understand
i) What is bridging?
ii) Why do we do it?

Regards
Vijay

Thanks ristau and Dan

Kind ATTN: ristau5741
Yes, the LAN adapter and WLAN adapters have different IP addresses
I know that tracert will tell us the path, but as I mentioned earlier, both LAN and WLAN adapters have the same default gateway
When I do a tracert, it goes through the same default gateway. How do we find out which adapter is used?

Kind ATTN: Dan

Are your adapters bridged together? I don't understand
i) What is bridging?
ii) Why do we do it?

Regards
Vijay

In the past i've had a notebook that bridged together both the wireless and wired connections using connectivity software (Fujitsu notebook I believe). This means that both the wireless and wired adapters would act as one interface thus giving the same ip address when either is connected.

In any standard OS, if both your lan and wireless adapters are connected simultaneously, normally the OS would favor wired connection over the wireless. To really know for sure, your gonna need to view the status of the interface and see how much traffic is running through them. Or fire up a traffic monitoring software on your machine like wireshark to monitor packet flow.

thanks for your answer.....I will try it with Wireshark, but I have difficulties in interpreting the packets in Wireshark

In my case, I dont think both LAN & WLAN adapters are acting as one interface. When I issue the command ipconfig, LAN's IP is 192.168.1.103 and WLAN's IP is 192.168.1.101, both having the same default gateway (192.168.1.1)
As I mentioned earlier the network and sharing window gives the path, Inspiron ----> Multiple networks --->Internet
It shows as Inspiron-->Linksys-->Internet when either the wireless or wired is active

Ok, what is the use of bridging? To increase the bandwidth?

Regards
Vijay

thanks for your answer.....I will try it with Wireshark, but I have difficulties in interpreting the packets in Wireshark

In my case, I dont think both LAN & WLAN adapters are acting as one interface. When I issue the command ipconfig, LAN's IP is 192.168.1.103 and WLAN's IP is 192.168.1.101, both having the same default gateway (192.168.1.1)
As I mentioned earlier the network and sharing window gives the path, Inspiron ----> Multiple networks --->Internet
It shows as Inspiron-->Linksys-->Internet when either the wireless or wired is active

Ok, what is the use of bridging? To increase the bandwidth?

Regards
Vijay


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Please answer this

i think the answer you are looking for is related to the interface metrics that windows give each network card.

if you do a "route print" you will see the routing table for your laptop

windows will pick the interface with the lowest metric.

example

Code: Select all

IPv4 Route Table
===========================================================================
Active Routes:
Network Destination        Netmask          Gateway       Interface  Metric
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0      192.168.1.1    192.168.1.100     20
        127.0.0.0        255.0.0.0         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
        127.0.0.1  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
  127.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
      192.168.1.0    255.255.255.0         On-link     192.168.1.100    276
      192.168.1.1  255.255.255.255         On-link     192.168.1.100    100
    192.168.1.100  255.255.255.255         On-link     192.168.1.100    276
    192.168.1.255  255.255.255.255         On-link     192.168.1.100    276
      192.168.2.0    255.255.255.0      192.168.5.1    192.168.5.164    100
      192.168.4.0    255.255.255.0      192.168.5.1    192.168.5.164    100


Excellent Davidr

Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric
0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.100 20
127.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.101 25
The lowest metric being 20, which is for the LAN adapter, that is chosen as per your logical explanation. Now another question related to this

i) How is metric calculated? Metric for LAN adapter is 20 and metric for WLAN adapter is 25. How is this?

ii) This helps in redundancy here. When the LAN adapter goes down, the WLAN adapter takes over. Why was this not happening in my company?
Either the Wireless or the Wired works at a time. Is it made that way for any security reason?
iii) My friend has a similar setup as I have. A wireless router with four ethernet ports. Only one of them is active at a time. What should I do to
use both adapters?
iv) What is the bridging? What is the use of think

Please answer these. I will be really grateful

Regards
Vijay

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299540

should give you a general idea.

Thank you Sir

i) When both LAN and WLAN adapters are available, there is redundancy. When the LAN adapter goes down, the WLAN adapter takes over. Why was this not happening in my company? I was working on wireless. As soon as I plugged the ethernet cable, the wireless went down and LAN adapter came up. Either the Wireless or the Wired works at a time. Is it made that way for any security reason?
ii) My friend has a similar setup as I have. A wireless router with four ethernet ports. Only one of them is active at a time. What should I do to
use both adapters?
iv) What is the bridging? What is the use of think

Please answer these

Regards
Vijay

Disable one or the other, if that fails then get yourself a new router!