Recommend a wireless bridge?

I have just obtained a Sonicwall TZ-150 wireless appliance and a Netgear EVA700 media player. The latter is a box that takes input from an RJ-45 cable or 802.11g radio waves, and outputs audio and video (analog) to a TV.

These two devices are not playing nice. Perhaps this is a common theme in the world of 802.11g?

I am thinking that I might have to try placing a wireless bridge between the two devices. What I mean is that I would continue to use the TZ-150 as a wireless router/firewall/access point. I would attach a simple bridge to the EVA700 via RJ-45 cable. The bridge would "talk" to the TZ-150 via radio and relay to the RJ-45 cable, out to the EVA700.

Another midnight engineering project.

My problem is that I can't find a decent bridge. I want WPA, and I want reasonable bandwidth, in order to support streaming MPEG bitstreams at HDTV bitrates. 15 Mbit/s. would be nice.

The Linksys WET54G would be ideal, except that it might be a piece of shit. I have looked at the user reviews at Amazon.com and I am not encouraged.

Am I going to have to deploy a full service wireless AP and configure it to be a simple bridge? Or is there a nice, compact bridge that doesn't suck?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Reply to
David Arnstein
Loading thread data ...

snipped-for-privacy@panix.com (David Arnstein) hath wroth:

(...)

You might as well use a WRT54G or Buffalo router with DD-WRT in the client mode. That's because a dedicated bridge, game adapter, ethernet bridge, client radio, or whatever it's called this week, is possibly more expensive than the router. For example, the Buffalo WHR-HP-54G router is about $60 while the corresponding ethernet bridge WLI-TX4-G54HP is about the same price:

Might as well get the added features of the router.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

As far as the WET54G is concerned I have had pretty good luck with them until recently. The last 3 that I have deployed (version 3 latest firmware) lockup about once a week. I think I'll try and replace them with WRT54GL's running dd-wrt and stay away from them in the future.

Ian

Reply to
Ian

Thanks for the response Jeff. I am looking at the Buffalo router, and its slower cousin (ancestor?) the WHR-G54. The user manual does not mention any bridging or client capability. I don't think this would be a problem, because how would the router know that I am using it as a bridge? I can think of one problem: the router might not want to assign DHCP to clients on its wired interface, which is something that I'd like to do. Can you think of any other problems I might have?

Or to put it in a more cheerful point of view, would a dedicated bridge like the WLI-TX4-G54HP offer any useful features that a full service router would not offer?

Reply to
David Arnstein

snipped-for-privacy@panix.com (David Arnstein) hath wroth:

The stock firmware does not have a client mode. That's why I suggested DD-WRT replacement firmware. Le Tour de Firmware:

See under Wireless mode pulldown.

Very easily. In infrastructure mode, there are access points and clients. The way they act and protocols are quite different. Normally, wireless routers and access points are not used as clients unless they have a client mode.

Just to get complex, WDS (wireless distribution service) will do both simultaneously, which actually may be an advantage. If you plug directly into the ethernet port of the WDS client/bridge/access-point, then it will act as an ordinary client bridge. However, if you connect to it with another wireless client, it will extend your wireless network (at the expense of a 50% maximum thruput slowdown).

Not a problem. The client bridge is transparent to broadcasts and Layer 3 packets. A DHCP handshake should go right through the wireless bridge like it wasn't there. Remember, 802.11 wireless is nothing more than encapulated 802.3 ethernet packets.

No. The WHR-HP-G54 with DD-WRT has all the features of the WLI-TX4-G54HP client bridge. It's possible that the dedicated wireless bridge might draw less power than the full router, but I think it will be close.

If you're still shopping around, look for wireless game adapters. The catch is that they're all *MORE* expensive than the equivalent wireless router with a client mode. For example, the Dlink DGL-3420:

costs about $85. Hmmm...the similar DWL-G820 is cheaper at about $65.

The Linksys assortment:

Note that the buzzword "game adapter" seems to mean QoS that gives preference to game related packets. There's no guarantee that your video application will be in their pre-defined selection of games. QoS is a good thing, but methinks it should include user configurable rule sets.

More of the same:

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

My D-Link DWL-G700AP does that too! D-Link calls that repeater mode.

This model is being sold as an access point.

BTW I didn't know that it could also act as a client - which I now see that it can. I've been using it to extend the coverage of my Trendnet TEW-510APB.

So, if that's a repeater, then what is an extender?

Reply to
Axel Hammerschmidt

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com (Axel Hammerschmidt) hath wroth:

Does what? The DWL-G700AP does not have a WDS mode. It can only act as *EITHER* an access point, repeater, or client. See choices at:

I don't think it can *SIMULTANEOUSLY* act as an access point, repeater, or client. However, I'm willing to be suprised. What happens when you try it?

A repeater and a range extender are the same thing. These just retransmit packets using a store and forward system. To keep it from repeating literally anything that it hears, some manner of filter needs to be setup. Usually, it's by SSID, but it appears, from the config page, that the DWL-G700AP will only repeat packets from one specific access point MAC address.

WDS is quite different. It will simultaneously act as a client bridge and as a repeater. It requires that both the main access point and the remote device both support WDS. As a client, you just plug in a CAT5 cable and it thinks it's a client bridge. As a repeater, you connect via wireless to the WDS bridge, which then repeats the packets to the main access point. Things get really complex when there's more than two WDS bridges in the system. The big downside is that WPA encryption usually doesn't work with WDS (except between DD-WRT firmware devices).

(10 pages).

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

That's the DWL-700AP, not the DWL-_G_700AP.

I will try that, repeater and client. It can't "syemueltainiousley" :-) be an access point, because there is only one RJ45 jack. But it being able to be a client (Game Adapter) really surprised me.

Reply to
Axel Hammerschmidt

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com (Axel Hammerschmidt) hath wroth:

I did that on purpose as the online emulator for the DWL-G700AP doesn't have a client mode or repeater mode. There's no "mode" button under the advanced tab:

However, the above emulator link is for version 1.00 firmware and the other modes may have been added later. I guess yours has a "mode" button and really is a DWL-G700AP.

Well sorta. If it had the WDS feature, it still might have just one ethernet jack (for the wired client), but would still be able to accept wireless connections and repeat them to the main access point.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

That (emulator) has firmware version 1.0. The "gismo" I have was bought with version 2.0 firmware and has since been upgraded to v2.1, dated as of March 2006. The H/W is a ver B1.

(It was bought in Europe)

It worked as both a repeater and client simultaneously for a time - until the browser in the laptops (Powerbook and Thinkpad) both were pointed to Google. Then I lost the connection on the PB and the TP got locked onto the access point that the repeater was supposed to repeat, instead of the repeater itself. Scanning with the TP didn't work as it should. The lappies and the DWL-G700AP were on the same desk. I'll try it again and have the equipment spread out more.

But still, also being able to use the DWL-G700AP as a client is an improvement. I've seen that the shops here are selling D-Link's DWL-G710 Extender - at almost twice the price. Maybe that model has improved WDS features?

BTW. Turning on the log under Status on this DWL-G700AP reveals that it uses a Linux OS. D-Link doesn't seem to have published the source code for it, as they must under GPL.

Reply to
Axel Hammerschmidt

I am running two Buffalo WHR-G54S (both DD-WRT v23 SP2) here. The downstairs one is hooked to the Cable modem, set to AP, and acts as a DHCP server. The upstairs WHR-G54S is set to Client-Bridge, DHCP forwarder.

Upstairs, I have at least two of three computers running and on the net at the same time, W98SE (laptop), Warp4 (IBM 9595-OPT), and NT4 (IBM

9585-ONT).

Oddly, NT complains that a DHCP server can't be found, but running IPCONFIG /all shows the downstairs WHR-G54S doing just that. I can run Firefox from it without a problem.

I'll play with sett> >> You might as well use a WRT54G or Buffalo router with DD-WRT in the

Reply to
Louis Ohland

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com (Axel Hammerschmidt) hath wroth:

That's the difference between a "transparent bridge" and "client bridge (or whatever)". The transparent bridge will bridge more than one MAC address. The typical client bridge will only do one. John Navas went through and obtained a list of bridges and whether they will pass more than 1 IP:

No clue what the DWL-G700AP is doing.

Well, the 1.00 firmware on the emulator shows no sign of WDS. The US data sheet is the same:

I'm fairly sure it's not WDS because the PDF data sheet says: "The DWL-G710 is capable of repeating the wireless signal from virtually all routers and access points on the market today". I wonder if this is a "virtual" feature.

Nifty. However, I don't think it will get their attention. DLink has a long history of ignoring all criticism, including those from the trade press. When their routers were caught pounding a public NTP time server, their reaction was to do exactly nothing. At least Netgear paid the server owner some cash for the inconvenience and excessive bandwidth.

Well, well... Dlink finally settled (with undisclosed terms) 6 months later.

Looks like there's already some action in Germany against Dlink for their NAS products:

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Tried it again. Adsl-modem - router with DHCP server - access point (Trendnet TEW-510APB, 802.11a/b/g, WPA-PSK) in one end of the house. The D-Link DWL-G700AP (H/W B1, f/w 2.1, WPA-PSK) set up as a repeater in the other end of the house.

Connected a Powerbook (OS X 10.3.9) to the DWL-G700AP with a cable. The PB got an ip-address from the router.

Connected a Thinkpad (W2K, Philips SNN6500 802.11a/b/g PC Card, WPA-PSK) in the next room to the DWL-G700AP by wireless. The Philips client software shows the MAC address as well as the SSID. The TP also got an ip-address from the router. It took two tries - I think that was because there wasn't a saved configuration profile for the repeater in the client setup.

Surfed on both for about 10 minutes.

I'll try again later and have a look in logs of the TEW-510APB and DWL-G700AP and see what it says about connected MAC addresses.

I will also try long enough for a re-keying in WPA-PSK.

Because it doesn't state specifically that WDS is supported?

As far as I can tell, the DWL-G710 is a repeater/extender only. It has no access point or wireless client (game adapter) function.

Very interesting!

Reply to
Axel Hammerschmidt

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.