Networking – can’t see/ping other PCs in wireless network

network-printerwireless-networkingwireless-router

Network setup:

telephone socket
  |
  |cable
  |                            ____|-------|
|---------------|             / :  |ClientZ|
|Wireless-Router|-------------  :  |_______|
|_______________| radio-waves \ :
  |                            \___|-------|
  |cable                           |ClientW|
  |                                |_______|
|--------------|
|Gigabit-Switch|
|______________|
  | ... |
  cables
  | ... |_______
  |             |
|-------|     |-------|
|ClientX| ... |ClientY| 
|_______|     |_______|

Configuration:

  • Switch (D-Link DGS-1005D)
  • Router: (FritzBox Fon-Wlan 7113)
    • IP: 192.168.0.1
    • Subnet-mask: 255.255.255.0
    • DHCP active, assign IPs from 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0.99
  • Clients:
    • IP: Retrieve dynamic IP via DHCP
    • Subnet-mask: 255.255.255.0
    • Gate-way: 192.168.0.1
    • DNS-server: 192.168.0.1
  • All clients use the IP protocol version 4
  • Clients are a wild mix of Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OS X, iOS (+1 new wlan-printer)
  • All clients use basically the same network/firewall configuration (windows and mac os respectively)

Problem:

  1. All clients can access the internet. fine
  2. All clients can access the router (ping it, access its configuration site via http). fine
  3. All clients connected via cables to the gigabit-switch can see each other and exchange files. fine
  4. None of the wirelessly connected clients can see/ping any other client. bad =,(
  5. None of the clients connected via cables to the switch can see/ping any of the clients wirelessly connected to the router.bad =,(

This problem existed since I setup the network. It never bothered my since I was satisfied by being able to exchange files between the clients connected to the switch. But now I would like to access the ones connected wirelessly as well (mainly because of the printer).

I tried to ping them via their IP address (visible in the router), but got a timeout. Since the clients connected to the switch don't suffer from this problem I suspect the problem is with the router. Somehow it doesn't correctly route access to clients in the local network.

Unfortunately I don't know where to start trouble shooting, since I know nothing about networks. So I'm looking very much forward to Your suggestions/hints/advise.

Best Answer

As long as the wireless and wired clients are on the same subnet (as you have noted, you are using 192.168.0.x) then they are all on the same local network and should have no problems pinging each other, as long as ICMP is enabled on those computers. Are you certain that you have enabled ICMP responses on all computers involved?

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