Hi,

Has anyone got a Linksys AM300 working in half-bridge with a D-Link router?

I originally had a Dynalink RTA1320 ADSL router running in half-bridge mode (IP Extension on the RTA1320) with my D-Link wireless broadband router (DI-624S), but it often ran hot and now it has died on me (the ADSL router, not the wireless router).

Now I have a Linksys AM300, but when its connected to the Dlink wireless router they only work realiably together when the AM300 is in normal PPOA mode, not in half bridge - ie I get two layers of NATing and port forwarding.

The AM300 originally came with 1.19.02 firmware.  I connected it to my wireless router and it worked ok.  Then I turned on half-bridge mode and rebooted the AM300.  Again OK.  Then I powered everything down and when I next used it - not working. I get link lights OK, but no TCP/IP connectivity.  

So I connected the AM300 directly to my PC (with half-bridge) and it worked fine.  However, when I connect it back to the wireless router it doesn't.

After reading this forum and others, I tinkered with the timing of powering on the two devices, but no luck.

So my next step was to apply the 1.19.04 fimware and try that.  When connected directly to my PC, again it works fine in half-bridge mode, just as with the 1.19.02 firmware.  But again, when connected to the D-Link router, it doesn't work.

DHCP is enabled on the AM300, and the D-Link is configured to use DHCP to obtain its WAN IP.  The Dlink is on 192.168.0.x and the AM300 is on 192.168.1.x.  I've also tried using the AM300 with a completely different subnet but no change (10.0.0.1).

The only time I can get half-bridge working between the AM300 and the Dlink is to:

1. AM300 in normal PPOA mode with DHCP on.
2. Dlink obtained local IP from AM300 via DHCP.
3. Navigate to AM300 setup page.
4. Enable Half-bridge and reboot.
5. Wait for AM300 to finish connecting to ISP
6. Navigate to Dlink setup page a hit 'Renew DHCP lease'

If, however, I have to power either device down (eg the Dlink tends to lock up every few days), they won't connect.  Using 'Renew DHCP lease' on the Dlink doesn't fix the problem in this case, and neither does 'release and renew'.  It seems to be something to do with the way the Dlink's DHCP client works, because my PC doesn't have this problem when connected directly to the AM300 in half-bridge.

To recover from the above dead setup then I have to set the Dlink to a static ip in the AM300's local network subnet so I can navigate to the AM300's setup page to disable Half-bridge.

I keep thinking the problem must be with the Dlink not the Linksys, but then I remembered that the Dlink worked fine with the RTA1320 in half-bridge mode.

Can anyone shed any light on this particular configuration and where I might be going wrong?  


Cheers,
Dunc