WDS - three nodes

Sorry - that's wholly unreliable.

And what I'm asking is will the connection be faster if the 3rd (new) AP connects to the first (gateway) AP, rather than the second AP. Does the number of APs in the chain slow down data transfer significantly?

The Cisco commerical access point recommended configuring an ap with the radios off at large user count sites to act as WDS primary so that it can do its primary stuff without CPU capacity issues on the AP slowing down users.

The WRT54 consumer units probably have less CPU capacity to spare but also you'll have a lot fewer users than a large site.

Measure it and tell us how it works. Watch the load average in the dd-wrt software.

"__spc__" hath wroth:

Yes. Maximum thruput will drop. However, you may not see the effect if your internet connection is relatively slow. For example, let's say you have a typical 1.5Mbit/sec DSL line. The first wireless hop gets a 36Mbit/sec connection for a maximum thruput of 18Mbits/sec. The

2nd hop gets the same 36Mbits/sec connection speed, with the same 18Mbits/sec thruput from the 2nd radio. However, because only one xmitter can be on the air at a time, the system thruput goes down to 9Mbit/sec. However, you'll never see the loss in thruput because your download speed is limited by the 1.5Mbit/sec DSL connection.

More reading on the topic. Note that there is some controversy as to whether the maximum thruput drops linearly or exponentially: |

| | that WDS is really a form of mesh networking.

Run some CAT5 wire.

You would do better to have a simple access point downstairs (for your PS2 and desktop), with a CAT5 wire to either the main router, or if that's not possible, to the 2nd router that's running WDS. Neither arrangement has any speed loss involved. That also allows you to use a different RF channel for this access point, so that there's no mutual interference.

Hi,

I'm just paralleling what Jeff already said, albeit less technically, but I used to play around with WDS quite a bit.

Not only does it halve things, but it also causes some real nastyness as well. After looking closely at what was going on with SNMP software, I stopped doing the whole repeating thing all together. While it works "well enough" for internet traffic, its really not an efficient way to extend a WLAN out for point-to-point traffic.

As Jeff said, try to run them as completetly "seperate access points", on seperate channels. You may have to play a bit to find the most efficient seperation.

You don't have to run CAT5 for a seperate AP if you as a wireless-ethernet bridge. I have one of my AP's connected through a bridge. Its using the same SSID as the AP it is connected to, of which most of my client software (laptop, PDA) are smart enough to switch between automatically as one or the other's strength increases. Essentially, it is a "repeater" but without cutting pipe in half. Works fine.

(I'm using mainly DLink stuff.)

You may want to consider a minor change... I have three Linksys WRT54G 's (plural, not the GS) on my 10 acre place, two (in the house) connected by a straight cat 5 (out of one to wan input of the next), and the third in the outbuilding (800ft away but the same power as the house - buried underground power cable), I used the netgear powerline networking (three types, one up to 54Mb, two 85Mb/second, up too 200Mb, way faster than the input connection) and use the output from the powerline network as the wan input the the third.. Same ssid on all 3, have one huge hotspot....

Netgear product webpage

(only shows the 54 and 84Mb models)

Have no idea if that same scenario would work with WDS..... Can't see why not, and you wouldn't suffer from the halving speed problem...