How can my wireless base station and extender play nice?

August 19, 2008 9:03 AM

How can my wireless router and extender make my entire network seamless?

I've got a Linksys WRT54G (WPA2 password) as my base station and a Belkin F5D7132 Extender down the hall to extend the WAN to my office.

I've configured the Belkin to use the Linksys's credentials, and it's currently working using its own SSID. Under this method, I can machines connected to each SSID, and most of the data seems to flow OK. However, I've got two big hiccups (so far):

- I'm running AirTunes, attached to the Linksys. My desktop, which is attached to the Belkin, can't see it.

- I back up my laptop wirelessly to my desktop using Time Machine. Yes, I know, this is not a recommended use of Time Machine, but it's worked fine for ages. Now, I get a kernel panic (gray screen) whenever it tries to back up.

Is there a setting for making the entire network completely seamless? The documentation for the Belkin blows.

posted by mkultra to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

Both those sound like symptoms of a problem with Bonjour/Rendezvous multicast traffic not travelling across network segments. Without knowing offhand how the Belkin works or is configured (i.e. straight network bridge? NAT'ing between different subnets on either side?), the basic idea is that you have to let traffic to/from 224.0.0.255 (actually, probably just 224.0.0.251:5353, which is the Bonjour/Rendezvous mdns IP:port) to broadcast freely across both network segments.

How that may be done in the particular case of the Belkin F5D7132 is left as an exercise for the reader (i.e. I don't know... ;-)
posted by Pinback at 7:10 AM on August 28, 2008