How to bridge two wired networks via wireless?
February 16, 2006 6:52 PM Subscribe
Is it possible to bridge two in-home wired networks wirelessly?
The best way to ask this question is to describe the ideal situation I'm trying to achieve:
Downstairs is one computer, a high-speed connection, cable modem, and wireless router. The wireless router beams upstairs to another computer.
Upstairs, I want to add more computers to the network. But they are not wireless-ready.
So, I want to beam that signal from downstairs to a device upstairs, then split the signal received upstairs to several wired computers.
Can this be done?
The best way to ask this question is to describe the ideal situation I'm trying to achieve:
Downstairs is one computer, a high-speed connection, cable modem, and wireless router. The wireless router beams upstairs to another computer.
Upstairs, I want to add more computers to the network. But they are not wireless-ready.
So, I want to beam that signal from downstairs to a device upstairs, then split the signal received upstairs to several wired computers.
Can this be done?
I write this post to you from such a set up. DSL line and gateway, a 802.11b wireless AP, and a switch are in the living room. At the back of the house, two offices with 3 computers, wired up with 100 MB ethernet. Linking the two are a pair of DLink DWL-2000 wireless APs in bridge mode. Works fine.
(The DLinks are complete crap though; don't buy them).
posted by teece at 7:09 PM on February 16, 2006
(The DLinks are complete crap though; don't buy them).
posted by teece at 7:09 PM on February 16, 2006
If you do go with the WRT-54g I unrecommend sveasoft, just because they're crazy. They have a weird thing where all the stuff they distribute is GPL but they still have weird and inconvenient licences on it. I'm not positive it's illegal but it's definitely irritating. OpenWRT is pretty easy and non-obnoxious.
posted by aubilenon at 7:12 PM on February 16, 2006
posted by aubilenon at 7:12 PM on February 16, 2006
Second aubilenon's comments - sveasoft used to be awesome, but these days the firmware is none-too-reliable (PPPoE has been broken for almost a year now - making it pretty useless to a great number of people, myself included, for an instance), the licencing control is strange (firmware is built locked to five specific MAC addresses - they'll give you more if you ask, but they don't want anyone else distributing their firmware, despite it being built on open-source packages) and James sometimes acts plain weird...
posted by benzo8 at 7:27 PM on February 16, 2006
posted by benzo8 at 7:27 PM on February 16, 2006
I second teece's comment. You need an WiFi-to-ethernet bridge. It's the reverse of an access point essentially, and many existing access points have a 'bridge mode'. There are also stand-alone ethernet bridges made by several network device makers. (e.g. linksys wet54g, dlink dwl-810, smc webt-g, etc.).
I'm using an access point + bridge between my house and garage. I'm using some old cheap Trendnet 802.11a access points, one configured as an access point, one configured as a bridge. It's like a really long virtual ethernet cable and I never have problems with it. Plus since it's on 802.11a, it doesn't interfere with my (or my neighbor's) wireless networks.
Sometimes bridges are marketed as 'game adapters' so people can hook their Xbox to their wireless net. I'm not sure if these support more than one computer hooked up to them. Avoid the 'game adapters' for that reason.
posted by todbot at 8:15 PM on February 16, 2006
I'm using an access point + bridge between my house and garage. I'm using some old cheap Trendnet 802.11a access points, one configured as an access point, one configured as a bridge. It's like a really long virtual ethernet cable and I never have problems with it. Plus since it's on 802.11a, it doesn't interfere with my (or my neighbor's) wireless networks.
Sometimes bridges are marketed as 'game adapters' so people can hook their Xbox to their wireless net. I'm not sure if these support more than one computer hooked up to them. Avoid the 'game adapters' for that reason.
posted by todbot at 8:15 PM on February 16, 2006
I have two PCs (one WinXP, one Linux) connecting through a hub and then a Motorola bridge to a Linksys wireless router right now. No problems. I'm posting from one right now.
posted by gimonca at 9:02 PM on February 16, 2006
posted by gimonca at 9:02 PM on February 16, 2006
I have struggled with this problem repeatedly, and have spent a lot of money chasing different solutions, because wiring just wasn't going to work. Fortunately, things have improved some, but I had a hell of a time.
First, don't do Sveasoft. They're unbelievably nasty assholes; they have hijacked a bunch of open source and claim to own it. They have lied to providers about 'hack attempts', with spoofed logs, to try to get accounts of people hosting their (GPLed!) software shut down. Don't send them money and don't support them; they are evil.
OpenWRT may work. You have to buy two WRT54Gs. However, you can't just go out and buy them, because Linksys changed the OS in the most recent builds. WRT54Gs version 5 and up are crippled and don't work right with the open firmwares. Check the OpenWRT website, but I think you would need to either buy 54g version 4 and earlier, or 54GS version 3 or earlier. (Asus also makes a wireless access point that should work with the OpenWRT firmware, but I don't know the model number.)
In theory, you should be able to set one WRT54G as a normal access point, and then set the other one in 'client bridging' mode. That just means it looks like a wireless client and forwards any packets it sees back and forth. But this never worked right for me with any firmware I tried; many of them claimed to support it, but it never ever worked. I have seen people say that it is working better now, so this might be the best solution. Make sure that people tell you it's working before you buy!
Last year, it didn't work, so I had to keep trying. The other method of bridging is 'WDS', for Wireless Distribution Services. This is a version of bridging where both APs are set up as access points. You then configure each of them with the address of the other. This is only half the speed of client-mode bridging, because every packet gets repeated by the other AP; it instantly doubles your wireless traffic.
Neither of these worked for me, because I also wanted to use WPA2, the newer form of wireless encryption. The old-style WEP encryption has been broken and is now useless; it can be cracked in five minutes or under by any random Joe sitting on the streetcorner. WPA flat didn't work with WDS at the time. WEP-mode WDS was fine, but I refused to run WEP.
So I bought a Linksys WAP54G, which is supposed to be a wireless bridge. It's a complete piece of shit. It works in WEP mode... but in WPA mode it will drop the connection at least once an hour, and will NOT pick it back up until being unplugged. Linksys, of course, claims that it works perfectly, even though it obviously doesn't.
The solution I eventually ended up with, after spending a lot of money and time, was a single WRT54GS v1 as my AP. I then bought a Slimdevices Squeezebox, which is a wireless music player: the bridging is just an ancillary feature. I wanted music where I wanted the bridge, so it worked out great for me.... so well, in fact, that I bought another and bridged in a third segment.
These little guys have been absolutely flawless. My network is rock-solid; they never go down. It's as good as running a wire, albeit somewhat slower. If you're in need of a music player at either of your network locations, it'd be a great solution.... WRT54G on one end, Squeezebox on the other.
Oh.... Squeezeboxes have only one network port, so to plug in several machines, you'd have to add a small switch or hub. Fortunately, those are very cheap.
posted by Malor at 9:48 PM on February 16, 2006
First, don't do Sveasoft. They're unbelievably nasty assholes; they have hijacked a bunch of open source and claim to own it. They have lied to providers about 'hack attempts', with spoofed logs, to try to get accounts of people hosting their (GPLed!) software shut down. Don't send them money and don't support them; they are evil.
OpenWRT may work. You have to buy two WRT54Gs. However, you can't just go out and buy them, because Linksys changed the OS in the most recent builds. WRT54Gs version 5 and up are crippled and don't work right with the open firmwares. Check the OpenWRT website, but I think you would need to either buy 54g version 4 and earlier, or 54GS version 3 or earlier. (Asus also makes a wireless access point that should work with the OpenWRT firmware, but I don't know the model number.)
In theory, you should be able to set one WRT54G as a normal access point, and then set the other one in 'client bridging' mode. That just means it looks like a wireless client and forwards any packets it sees back and forth. But this never worked right for me with any firmware I tried; many of them claimed to support it, but it never ever worked. I have seen people say that it is working better now, so this might be the best solution. Make sure that people tell you it's working before you buy!
Last year, it didn't work, so I had to keep trying. The other method of bridging is 'WDS', for Wireless Distribution Services. This is a version of bridging where both APs are set up as access points. You then configure each of them with the address of the other. This is only half the speed of client-mode bridging, because every packet gets repeated by the other AP; it instantly doubles your wireless traffic.
Neither of these worked for me, because I also wanted to use WPA2, the newer form of wireless encryption. The old-style WEP encryption has been broken and is now useless; it can be cracked in five minutes or under by any random Joe sitting on the streetcorner. WPA flat didn't work with WDS at the time. WEP-mode WDS was fine, but I refused to run WEP.
So I bought a Linksys WAP54G, which is supposed to be a wireless bridge. It's a complete piece of shit. It works in WEP mode... but in WPA mode it will drop the connection at least once an hour, and will NOT pick it back up until being unplugged. Linksys, of course, claims that it works perfectly, even though it obviously doesn't.
The solution I eventually ended up with, after spending a lot of money and time, was a single WRT54GS v1 as my AP. I then bought a Slimdevices Squeezebox, which is a wireless music player: the bridging is just an ancillary feature. I wanted music where I wanted the bridge, so it worked out great for me.... so well, in fact, that I bought another and bridged in a third segment.
These little guys have been absolutely flawless. My network is rock-solid; they never go down. It's as good as running a wire, albeit somewhat slower. If you're in need of a music player at either of your network locations, it'd be a great solution.... WRT54G on one end, Squeezebox on the other.
Oh.... Squeezeboxes have only one network port, so to plug in several machines, you'd have to add a small switch or hub. Fortunately, those are very cheap.
posted by Malor at 9:48 PM on February 16, 2006
I'm using two WRT54Gs to connect two wireless segments in my home using WDS while also serving as access points wireless clients. The link is secured with WPA (as I recall, the differences with WPA2 really only apply in environments where there is a lot of roaming between different access points).
I had to use a 3rd party firmware to get this working. First I used HyperWRT, but had problems with the link dropping every day, and DNS resolution of machine names on my network failing. Recently, I upgraded to the Tofu12 variant of HyperWRT and now everything is pure network goodness. With the right firmware, it's really easy to setup.
As Malor noted, the latest version of the plain WRT54G is no longer capable of running 3rd party linux based firmwares, but the GS and GL versions are. Tofu's firmware won't run on the GS, but Thibor's will, and I'm pretty sure it and Tofu share a lot of the same code and customizations.
posted by Good Brain at 11:34 PM on February 16, 2006
I had to use a 3rd party firmware to get this working. First I used HyperWRT, but had problems with the link dropping every day, and DNS resolution of machine names on my network failing. Recently, I upgraded to the Tofu12 variant of HyperWRT and now everything is pure network goodness. With the right firmware, it's really easy to setup.
As Malor noted, the latest version of the plain WRT54G is no longer capable of running 3rd party linux based firmwares, but the GS and GL versions are. Tofu's firmware won't run on the GS, but Thibor's will, and I'm pretty sure it and Tofu share a lot of the same code and customizations.
posted by Good Brain at 11:34 PM on February 16, 2006
OpenWRT is robust, but quite hairy to use if you're not comfortable with CLI Linux. Something like DD-WRT has a nicer GUI, and also does bridging.
posted by meehawl at 8:23 AM on February 17, 2006
posted by meehawl at 8:23 AM on February 17, 2006
I should add that the current highest-end router you can buy that runs Open WRT/DD-WRT etc is the Asus WL-500 DLX. It has twice the RAM of the Linksys routers, along with USB ports for attaching disk storage or other peripherals such as Flash RAM/webcams, etc.
posted by meehawl at 8:26 AM on February 17, 2006
posted by meehawl at 8:26 AM on February 17, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by reverendX at 6:58 PM on February 16, 2006