2701HGV-C /LAN /WIRELESS /MAC FILTERING Query

[tfc]

If one uses the MAC filtering facility on the 2701HGV-C router, to restrict acccess to known local clients, does this also filter access for clients attempting to access the BTOpenzone service on the router?

I ask this because I have used the MAC filtering and it works fine on the private LAN addresses, but since setting it, I have seen no activity on any of the BTOpenzone 10.185.211. addresses in the DNS list. (The private LAN is set to the default using addresses in the 192.168.1 range.)

Thanks

[JohnE]

Have you tried connecting to the Openzone network, to see if you still have internet access via Openzone?

[tfc]

John, Thank you for your reply.

No, I haven't done that, because I thought that rather than experimenting, and changing settings which I am fairly sure will need a factory reset to correct, I thought that it would be more sensible to ask the question, as someone in BT would understand how the router actually works, and could tell me the answer.

I don't want to change things just to try it out because I think this is what I need to do.

1. On the router, remove the existing MAC entry from the MAC Filtering list.

2. On the machine that I am going to test on BT Openzone, I have to change its name to a dummy name before attempting to connect. (Why, see my Name/DNS Issues note below)

3. Attempt to connect on BT Openzone.

4. After the test change the name of the machine back to the correct name (whilst disconnected from any network)

5. On the router restore the MAC filtering.

Name/DNS Issues

===========

The reason I would have to go through this process is that the DNS list in the router, erroneously ceates multiple DNS entries for the same name and different addresses. (.e.g. if FRED is 192.168.1.64 on private network, then after connection to BT Openzone (without a name change) the DNS list will now contain 2 entries for FRED the first with the 192.168.1.64 address and another with the BT Openzone 10.185.211.x address. This is a problem, because when Windows asks for the address for FRED, it can pick up either address. If it picks up the BT Openzone address, and the machine is on the LAN 192.168.1.x address, then the machine cannot be found.

I have raised before in this forum the question of how to remove entries in the DNS (i.e. to flush the DNS), again nobody actually knew how to do it and suggested that I attempted to clear the device list. That has no effect on the DNS, so the only way that I know to clear the list or even just to remove one entry, is to reset the router to the factory settings.

This is not just an academic concern. When I installed the router first, the router DNS somehow picked up the local loopback address (127.0.0.1) of one machine as its address for the DNS table. This was in spite of the fac that the machines correct entry was already in the DNS. The result was that machine became invisible to other machines on the private LAN, because any attempt to resolve the name was returned as a local loopback address, and so the machine requesting the lookup, ended up contemplating itself. The only way out (in the short tem was to fix the resolution in the HOSTS file on the other machines in the network. (Not very convenient, but it worked.)

You can't just edit the address on the Domain Name Server Resolution screen. It regards entry of a name which is already in the list as an error! The only answer is to factory reset the router. (After the factory reset I was then able to remove the HOSTS entries.)

It is for this 'DNS' reason that I would have to go through the steps that I described above. If I make any mistake, I am likely to need to reset the router again.

Thanks

tony

[tfc · Accepted solution]

The question has now been answered for me.

I have seen a user logon and use the BT Openzone service. The user count on the BT Openzone servce page was also non-zero. So, it appears that the MAC filtering on the private network LAN does not affect BT Openzone, which is what I would have expected.

The difference between the 2700 and the 2701 routers is that the 2700 records the BT Openzone connections in the DNS. Using the 2700, it can be seen that the BT Openzone service has been used when one looks at the Domain Name Server Resolution page. Using the 2701 the DNS seems to record only the private LAN usage, so there is no 'logged' record of the BT Openzone activity in the Domain Name Server Resolution page.

Thanks

Tony

[JohnE]

While you were busy, Tony, so were my colleagues on the Ethernet helpdesk, who were testing this yesterday afternoon.  As we all suspected, MAC filtering does not operate over the Openzone network.

It is interesting that the 2701 logs a DNS entry when Openzone is accessed but not the 2700.  Thanks for your efforts and for posting the results.

[tfc]

Thanks John,

Just a small correction - The 2700 DNS does log the BT Openzone. The 2701 does not.

Thanks

Tony