: > >> Ideally, I'd like to take a wireless internet source and turn it : > >> into a wired internet source. Is there any way to do this with a : > >> wireless router or do I need a wireless bridge? : > >
: > > What do you mean by a "wireless internet source" ? : >
: > Good point.. If it is a true wireless internet source (like a data card for : > use with cellphone networks), they actually make wap/routers that use data : > cards and then allow both wired and wireless connections to the data card : > via the wap/router... which one depends on if you are trying to do that, and : > what carrier you have (different links for different providers/hardware) : : My internet source is my school's wireless in dorm source. If I can : somehow feed my personal router with this source, I would have better : coverage in my room, in addition to a wired source for my TiVo. Any : thoughts? (Thanks so far)
If the wireless source is one of a rather rare class of routers capable of participating in a mesh network, you could use another such router to convert the wireless signal back to wired. But unless your dorm is at MIT (or possibly one of a handful of other schools), your dorm source probably doesn't have that capability.
Whether you could set up a wireless bridge probably depends on the capability of the school's router and on how it's configured. Cheap wireless routers typically have to be dedicated to either bridging or serving users, but better ones may not have that restriction. If the school's router can't bridge and serve users at the same time, simple bridging probably isn't an option.
What you might be able to do is use your computer as a router (fairly straightforward with Windows XP Pro and I think also with most flavors of Unix). On the WAN side, let your computer's wireless interface talk to (and obtain its IP address from) the school's router. On the LAN side, connect a cheap minihub to the computer's RJ-45 interface, and plug your TIVO into that. Remember that you have to give the TIVO a way to obtain an IP address. So your computer has to be configured to either pass DHCP protocol through or assign its own IP addresses using NAT. All this isn't impossible to set up, but it isn't a job for a newbie either.
Bob