Networking issues - LAN to WIFI

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I'm not sure if this is router of Linux related, so bear with me please.

I recently got a new router (N300 Netgear Telkom router) and in that same time did a complete system migration on my Arch desktop from initd to systemd, so that is the reason I'm not sure whether this is Linux or hardware related.

Problem:
I cannot seem to connect from WIFI to LAN. The Arch pc is connected via LAN cable to the router and then the rest of the house is on WIFI (Lubuntu, Mint, Android, etc.) If I ping from any WIFI device to the LAN pc, the connection is dead, BUT the funny thing is if I first ping from the LAN to any WIFI device then the connection is live and everything works like it should (ssh, CIFS, etc.)
As soon as I kill ping on the LAN pc the connection between LAN and WIFI dies again. So in order to have the two communicate I have to have a ping running on the LAN pc for the entire time.
I cannot find anything on the logs on the Arch pc.

Has anyone ever experienced this? As you can imagine it makes networking between the different devices a headache. Any advice appreciated!
 
Do you have tcpdump installed? It can see more than just tcp, ie. arp requests. Stop the pings, start up tcpdump, and then try and get to the pc from the wifi devices and see if the pc receives any traffic.

Also, what kind of iptables rules do you have on the linux pc if any?

I also a confused by this one, but I am sure once you establish where the problem is, a fix can be found. So start with tcpdump, if you have checked the iptables rules ect.
 
Just did a tcpdump and the connection all of a sudden stayed on. Will test during the rest of the day and into the night to see what on earth is going on here.
 
I think the issue is with your Linux config somehow.

Before systemd, did you configure your network card to dhcp in /etc/rc.conf ?
Now with systemd, how is the network getting configured?

If not, maybe switch over to NetworkManager and let it manage the network configuration for you, and while many people don't like it, on a Desktop/Laptop pc I've come to prefer it, even on my XBMC HTPC I use NetworkManager and let XBMC integrate with it.
 
The Arch PC has a static IP and in the olden days configured via /etc/rc.conf

With systemd it is quite a mission to configure a static IP. To be honest I'll have to read up on what I did, but it was no small feat.

I'll check into this.
 
This is going to take a while to test. There are so many network options that testing each and every one will take some time. Got some more info on this here:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=130962

Seems most promising.

My network configs seems okay, double checked so that should not be a problem, not just to see if fine tuning the network will do any good.
 
To perhaps make life easier, try to boot a Live Distro off a CD or USB and check if you still have the problem, that should isolate whether the issue is with your Arch Install or not. I should have thought about this earlier.
 
LiveCD gave no problems, so I switched to dhcp on the Arch pc but still the problem persists.

Seems like I'll have to take this over to the Arch forums and see if there is something I missed somewhere.
:(
 
Strange problem indeed, but sounds like it is arch linux with systemd specific. Any other changes that happened while you changed over to systemd? Maybe it is not even systemd that is the problem, but something like a kernel upgrade that is causing it.

But the fact that it worked while tcpdump is running, makes me wonder if the card is not going into sleep mode while there is no activity, and of-coarse it would wake up when tcpdump is running.

The problem with systemd is, as I understand it, it takes over a bunch of work and automate it, which is what sound like is happening here, that or the kernel driver.
 
This systemd has been a nightmare of note, a lot of stuff breaking all over the place.

Some say it was a must other say they just created a new set of problems. At this stage it feels like they want to be to much like Windows, have everything automated, and this creates problems upon problems.

Hopefully it is only some growing pains to something wonderful and better, at least I hope so.

EDIT:
Okay, maybe that rant was a bit premature...

I'm now officially bowled.

Now it seems like it might be a router issue again. I took out a LAN cable, connected the one WIFI device directly to the router (which already has a hard link to the Arch box) and now the network is up.

I have no idea where to even start diagnosing this problem. I think I'll head on over to the Netgear forums and hear if there is such cases reported.
:(
 
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I think systemd is the right choice for linux, instead of every distro using their own kind of scripts to start up a system.

So it will have some growing pains, but Ubuntu is doing fine with it, Debian is implementing it, and some other distros have had it for a while too.
 
It seems there is no real fix for this, so in short, do not buy Netgear for the foreseeable future till they sort this out. There is beta firmware out but the issue persists. It is not only this router, but a couple other SOHO routers as well that is affected.

It seems the only real solution would be to have my entire network either LAN or WIFI, so I'll have to buy a new WIFI adapter for my Arch PC.
:(
 
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