Wireless repeater / extender?

[Vikas]

Originally Posted By: brandini

Your wifi clients should float between both with ease.


I never had a good luck on doing "auto" float between the two points. May be my clients iPhone and iTouch are not really smart to figure out when to jump from one to another? I have my wireless setup correctly i.e. I can see that iPhone does get the same ip address and gateway when attached to primary or secondary access point. It definitely will NOT handle swapping during the streaming such watching utube content.

 

[brandini]

Originally Posted By: Vikas
Originally Posted By: brandini

Your wifi clients should float between both with ease.


I never had a good luck on doing "auto" float between the two points. May be my clients iPhone and iTouch are not really smart to figure out when to jump from one to another? I have my wireless setup correctly i.e. I can see that iPhone does get the same ip address and gateway when attached to primary or secondary access point. It definitely will NOT handle swapping during the streaming such watching utube content.

edit:
Forgot to add that devices only switch when the 'newer' signal is X ammount better than the 'older' one. They will have to renegotiate so moving during streaming is not possible as the handoff is not seamless like cell networks.
/edit

For those that are getting different IP addresses when connecting to the 2nd router, then you do not have the 'secondary' router (that should be acting as a bridge) set up correctly:

Set 2nd router's ip address is 1 higher than the first
Make sure the wifi settings are IDENTICAL
Turn off DHCP
Connect any LAN port on main router to any LAN port on 2nd router (DO NOT USE WAN)
Should work, may require you to power all network equipment off and power it all back on starting at the wall/modem and working in.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Vikas
Originally Posted By: brandini

Your wifi clients should float between both with ease.


I never had a good luck on doing "auto" float between the two points.

Another question on this topic: when initially connecting, will the wifi client automatically connect to the AP with the stronger signal? Since both APs will have the same SSID, how will I know to which AP the wifi client actually connected itself?

 

[brandini]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: Vikas
Originally Posted By: brandini

Your wifi clients should float between both with ease.


I never had a good luck on doing "auto" float between the two points.

Another question on this topic: when initially connecting, will the wifi client automatically connect to the AP with the stronger signal? Since both APs will have the same SSID, how will I know to which AP the wifi client actually connected itself?

You'll have to look at the mac address of the router if you can find that info on the device you're connecting with.

 

[Vikas]

Do NOT give the same SSID name; I thought that would make it transparent but it turned out to be a big mess.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Vikas
Do NOT give the same SSID name; I thought that would make it transparent but it turned out to be a big mess.


A common SSID on AP's in a cluster works properly..... the key is the fact they are in a cluster.

 

[Vikas]

Do home wireless routers have the clustering capability? I do not recall word "cluster" mentioned in a typical wireless router manual.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Vikas
Do home wireless routers have the clustering capability? I do not recall word "cluster" mentioned in a typical wireless router manual.


Not without 3rd party firmware. Some of the "small business" wireless AP's do though.

 

[Quattro Pete]

So, what am I to do then with two home Asus routers running Tomato, one being in bridge mode? I don't think it supports clustering, does it?

Do I give them two different SSIDs or can I stick with one?

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
So, what am I to do then with two home Asus routers running Tomato, one being in bridge mode? I don't think it supports clustering, does it?

Do I give them two different SSIDs or can I stick with one?


Does it support "repeater" mode? If so, then you use a single SSID. A bridge setup does not. It connects two physical networks together, hence the term "bridge".

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL

Does it support "repeater" mode? If so, then you use a single SSID.

Available options for Wireless Mode are:
- Access Point
- Access Point + WDS
- Wireless Client
- Wireless Ethernet Bridge
- WDS


Quote:

A bridge setup does not. It connects two physical networks together, hence the term "bridge".

So how would you interpret the text from the how-to article linked above?

Quote:

Wireless Ethernet bridge mode

At the risk of sounding redundant, wireless Ethernet bridge mode is just like wireless client mode, except that the client is bridged to the host. In bridged mode, your clients think they are connected directly to the host router. They receive their IP addresses from the host router. The client router is a transparent intermediary.

 

[OVERKILL]

From the same article:

Quote:
Technically, when in client mode, your router can only pass the incoming wireless signal to clients connected to one of the router's LAN ports. To re-broadcast the signal wirelessly, the router would need to be configured as a repeater—unfortunately, Tomato does not yet support repeater mode. One option is to switch to DD-WRT V24, which does support repeater mode, although it is in general not as user-friendly as Tomato. Another option is to use two wireless routers—one configured in Tomato client mode, connected by Ethernet to the second router, configured as an AP (access point). [For more on DD-WRT, read “Wi-Fi Planet’s Greatest Hits: DD-WRT.”]


In a bridge, the router connects to the Wifi network being broadcast and joins (hence the term again) the network it is physically connected to to that network. It literally bridges two networks together, that's why it is called a bridge.

In a client setup the remote devices get their info from the router setup as the client. In a bridge, they get their information (DHCP address....etc) from the remote/host router. The bridge is "transparent" to the setup.

WDS is what you are looking for assuming the form supported includes support for repeating and not simply bridging (which would be redundant given the other supported modes listed).

 

[Quattro Pete]

But in WDS mode, don't the access points relay data wirelessly only? Another words, this would happen:

laptop --- ((wireless connection)) --- AP2 --- ((wireless connection)) --- AP1/router --- cable modem --- Internet


What I want is this:

laptop --- ((wireless connection)) --- AP2 ---wired ethernet--- AP1/router --- cable modem --- Internet

Will WDS allow this?


I have the option to connect the two APs using wired ethernet, and I would like to utilize it to avoid having multiple wireless hops.

 

[OVERKILL]

Yes, WDS uses wireless for them to talk. I don't think your desired topology is supported by the hardware you are using. A pair of Cisco AP541N's setup in a cluster would do it, but you aren't going to want to spend that kind of money.

With your hardware you are likely limited to two separate SSID's.

Edit:
There ARE other AP's (from other vendors) that support clustering. D-Link did/does make one, so did/does USR for example. They will likely be less expensive.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL

With your hardware you are likely limited to two separate SSID's.

So, put them in Ethernet bridge mode?

Why does the article say to use the same SSID on both if using this mode?

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL

With your hardware you are likely limited to two separate SSID's.

So, put them in Ethernet bridge mode?

Why does the article say to use the same SSID on both if using this mode?


Because that is the information it is going to use to connect to the other router. It doesn't actually repeat that SSID locally. It provides no wireless connectivity. Think of using it as a bridge as a way of using it as a transparent wireless adapter.

Your best plan of action is to just set the second router as an AP and give it its own SSID unless you are willing to buy hardware to support the setup you are trying to create here.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Thanks.

One other thing regarding WDS, and I realize you're not a Tomato expert, but I figured I'd pick your brain anyway.

I'm reading the Tomato wiki on setting up WDS, and it says this:

Quote:
Using WDS to extend your network will reduce throughput, as each unit has to first receive the data and then resend it over the wireless link. Each added unit in the chain makes matters worse. For best throughput always wire extra AP's with CAT5 cable.


They make it sound as if using a wired connection between the APs would in fact work and be beneficial in WDS mode. Or did I misunderstand what they're saying here?

 

[OVERKILL]

Well, you can sure as heck TRY it with WDS. I'm not intimately familiar with Tomato's implementation of it. But you should be able to quite easily test it once setup.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Thanks. I'll definitely give it a try when I get the second AP.

How would I test whether the APs are actually communicating wirelessly or over wire? Just based on observed transfer speeds?

 

[PandaBear]

I "think" if you have control over both routers and you can run an ethernet wire between them, you can just turn off the NAT on the 2nd router and use it as an access point with a different or same SSID, and the 2nd router will use the 1st router as the gateway and use its subnet and DHCP.

Some professionals here will probably gives more detail on what else to do, but having the ability to run a wire makes the setup very easy and no need for client, WDS, repeater, etc mode. You can even run any router with stock firmware on the primary router and the tomato or ddwrt on the 2nd one.