Home Network (Wifi) & iPhones!!

[Niall_HK]

This problem is probably so obvious i do not see it, but it has takenme hours to resolve, but now i would love to know why!
My Home network has been up and running for some time with no issues, I use a Linksys E3200 router with 2 wireless printers (1 Canon 1 HP) 2 wired PCs, 7 wireless laptops, endless amount of Smartphones (Android & Apple) plus a Qnap 209II NAS.

My was set up using its default Class C IP address (192.xxx.xxx.xxx) with a WPA2 encryption and a MAC filter on the allowed devices to connect. I also limit the Number of IP addresses available as i live in Hong Kong with over 300 apartments withing 50 meters. Everything was working fine until i decided to ad a Qnap TS419 NAS as my current 3TB on the old Qnap was nearly full. Upon setting up the TS419, its default IP address was Class B (169.xxx.xxx.xxx) as i had changed my wired PC IP address to suit so that i could get access, i decided to change my whole network addressing to match the 169.xxx.xxx.xxx format. (why i did, i have no idea).

After redefining my Printers, Wired PCs and some of my none wired PCs with a Static IP, I had the Whole network up and running with my 2 NAS replicating and all PCs, Smart Phones happy as can be. Except two Iphone 4 and an original iPad..... They were connected to my network, they had valid IP, Router and DNS addresses as per my configurations and as per the other devices on my Network. All of these Apple (Dynamic IP) products could not access the web!!! I could access my Router from each Apple device and could also Ping them.

Hours went by tweaking this and that with no success, in the end i reconfigured the whole network back to the 192.xxx.xxx.xxx rang of IP addresses and hey presto, everything was back online. Nothing additional was done to any of the Smartphones they just picked up the Home network and were happy....

Can anybody give an idea to why this would prevnt 3 Apple devices from accessing the WWW, where everything else had no issue?

Many Thanks

 

[Fardringle]

The 169.x.x.x address that the NAS had originally meant that it was not connecting properly to your network. When a device has an address like that, it gave itself that address because it was not able to obtain an IP address from a DHCP server on the network. Some devices will let you actually use addresses in that range, but it sounds like the iPhone and iPad recognized that it's not a valid address range for normal use so they refused to connect with those addresses.

Somewhere in all of the disconnecting and reconnecting that you did, and then finally reconfiguring everything back where it should be with the 192.x.x.x address range, you did something managed to get the NAS actually connecting properly to the network. It's hard to say what it was, but my first guess would be that you had a relatively small limit set on the number of IPs that your router was allowed to distribute, and you had exceeded that number.

 

[Niall_HK]

Fardringle,
Thanks for that and as you mentioned the 169.xxx.xxx.xxx addresses were probably perceived to invalid which i sort of suspected (but confused me as they were real IP addresses not garbage ones when you have an inconsistent connection) but very surprised that Apple products would behave like this as i have found them to be the most reliable for connecting to any WiFi network.

The number of valid IP address allocated to the router was 18 which would cover all devices setup in the MAC filter so this did not prevent the connection.

 

[Bricked]

Were these addresses in the 169.254.x.x range?

 

[Niall_HK]

Yes 169.254.x.x was the address range.
This was set as the new Qnap 419 NAS had a default IP of 169.254.100.100.

 

[JackMDS]

169.254.x.x is not valid functional subnet.

Read the Qnap manual and learn how to assign to it a static IP of the sbnet of the rest of the Network (192.xxx.xxx.xxx ). It might be that you hacv to take one computer of the Network and connect it on it own to the Qnap in order to change its IP.

http://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Getting_Started

 

[Niall_HK]

Thanks for your reply JackMDS.
You gave me the simple answer that 169.254.x.x is not valid.

Doing some more reading on it now.