Can't find wireless AP ip after changing router IP/LAN settings

Question

I have a modem/router (Netgear dg834) and a wireless access point (Netgear wg602), the AP is directly connected to the router.

My old working configuration was:

router ip: 192.168.0.1 
access point ip: 192.168.0.10

My new configuration is:

router ip: 192.168.1.1 
access point ip: ???.???.???.???

I changed my router's IP/LAN settings to set up a VPN with another netgear router that had the same lan configuration.

Wireless network is still up and perfectly working, but i can't find the AP's ip. I've tried broadcast ping but the AP wont respond, i looked at the router "attached devices" but it's not there, i've played around with nmap and apr request but the AP is totally invisible.

I can fix it by resetting it to factory settings but i'm very interest in learning more about this problem. I'm also interested in network security and this fact of having an invisible AP well, it's something i'd like to undestand.

Answer 1

The access point's IP is probably still 192.168.0.10, since you didn't change it. That makes it unreachable by IP. Normally, an access point only has an IP for configuration purposes, so with an IP that's unreachable, you probably can't configure it. Data will still pass through it just fine though.

If you temporarily assign a PC connected to the access point an additional IP address that can reach the AP, such as 192.168.0.55, you can then reach the AP on its old IP address. That should allow you to correct the IP address to one that is inside the new LAN address range.

Answer 2

Using nmap, you can do a ping sweep - many devices won't respond to a broadcast ping, so this will ping each device individually.

nmap -sP 192.168.1.1-255