access point newbie question

[Thomas Pain]

So I'm an A+ certified computer tech so maybe I might be able to figure this stuff out by myself.  but no.

So I've got a linksys WAP54G ver 3.1 access point.  I'm using it in it's default access point mode.  (other modes available are AP Client, repeater, and bridge.  These other modes only connect to other linksys equipment.)

So the idea is that the ethernet port on the back of the access point (hereafter, "AP") is gonna get magically behave as if it was on the back of my wireless router. 

So the instructions say my AP should have the same SSID as my router.

So I set up the SSID and password.  Problem is that my laptop's wifi card now connects to the AP instead of the router, so I have to unplug power from the AP for the laptop to connect to the router.

Also, the AP is presumably connecting to the router, but, the ethernet port on the back of the AP ain't behaving as if it was on the back of the router.  I tried setting the AP's IP manually, and I tried also having the AP pull an IP with DHCP... same deal.. when I plug a computer to the AP, said computer tries to pull an IP using DHCP, but it no does work.  If I manually configure said computer's IP, same deal, still no connectivity. 

can anyone explain to me what is supposed to be doing different?

[Bobby Isosceles]

I don't use the linksys firmware, but if it is a WRT54(G) variant, what you are looking to do should automagically occur with the DD-WRT linux firmware (dd-wrt.com)

[Thomas Pain]

DD-WRT , huh?  Yeah I've seen that mentioned in a few places.  I guess I haven't looked at it yet because I'm kinda distracted by the question of how this thing works out of the box.  I figure I should make myself figure out how to hook this stuff up out of the box just as an intellectual exercise. 

I guess an access point and a bridge are different... and what I'm trying to do is to make a wireless bridge. 

It sounds like an access point is basically a wireless router with less features and a higher price tag.. That's kinda what I'm understanding.  huh. 

It turns out I am using a linkcysco wireless rounter, so I should be able to use my access point in bridge mode.  Still, I'd much prefer if I could find a bridge that will work with any brand of router rather than insisting on connecting to only certain models of a like brand, as this linksys AP/bridge does.  I want forwards compatibility with whatever hardware I may get in the future.

looking at the dd-wrt install instructions...  wow... no...  normally I'm game for that, but in this instance I'm looking for a plug 'n play solution...  All I want is a simple bridge, not a hacking project.  It would seem like this WAP54G is some of the best least sucky hardware you can get at a low price point, but still...

yeah almost all the other APs and bridges with reviews on newegg.com scare me... too many reviews that are too negative.  You can't take any one review at face value, but a collection of reviews can reveal a probability that an item has some problem, like poor reception, or constant random disconnection, or disconnection when you use a lot of the bandwidth... wtf... and like ALL of these products seem to have crappy instructions.  It's like the people responsible for the quality of American fast food decided to make routers too.

I think I'll try the hawking bridge...  Office depot has an older version but I want the newer version because it has a site survey function which is very nice for my application.

I have a hawking range extender... I'm trying to flash it with the hawking bridge update to see what that will do...

holy crap.. it worked... I'm now the proud owner of a Hi-Gain™ Wireless-300N Access Point/Bridge HWABN1 

or am I?  It still says on the status page:  System Status  Monitor the status and settings of your wireless range extender.

crap.  and I can't tell what colour the LEDs are blinking, either.  I'm partly colour blind.  only partly however, as I'm partly racists too.  I'm fin'a buy me a space bridge.

okay now I'm hitting the reset button to see if the default values come back as those of the range extender or those of the ap/bridge

this is funny...

Reset
In the event that the system stops responding correctly or stops functioning, you can perform a Reset. Your settings will not be changed. To perform the reset, click on the APPLY button below. You will be asked to confirm your decision. The Reset will be complete when the LED Power light stops blinking.


okay... so if the GUI locks up, I can use the GUI to reset it's self.... bootstraps?  What? 

okay, hitting the reset button seems to have bricked it...

trying again... nooooooo....

okay false alarm.  It looks like the AP/bridge requires a different gateway or IP or some such from the range extender.  I changed it over in my tcp/ip stack and I'm golden now. 

holy crap... now it says :

System Status Monitor the status and settings of your wireless Access Point/Bridge.

You can't beat that.  Well I'm gonna take this linksys back to officedepot for a refund...  hmm... should I flash it with the hawking firmware first... nawww...

woah woah woah wha's this... it's... some kind of... back door...  I'm getting access to the facebook pages of Chinese dissidents...  woahhh... oh my god... you would not believe this... this chick has these bikini self-shots in a mirror and oh oh my...  I normally don't go for Chinese chicks but wow.  I gotta send myself a friend request from her account for sure.

anyhow lemmi tag this post for google is about hawking HWREN1 conversion to HWABN1 flash the HWREN1 with the HWABN1 firmware.  damn that chinese chick is firm!

[Thomas Pain]

oh happy day!  it works!  I is typing this to you from the hawking wireless bridge!  even the DHCP works no problem on the client computer.  I have to say that impression I get of hawking is manuals not completely in english and the repeater interface was confusing as all hell and somewhat cumbersome, but none-the-less at the same time impressive in that you could tell the people who put it together were somewhat technical minded and were focusing more on function than form.  so many routers is focus on form of interface is what kills the function of is.  but the bridge interface quite nice and pretty straightforward, seems even to use standard terminology and such.  can flash repeater into bridge and I assume vice versa.  that's pretty impressive.  just wouldn't try it with the original version of their bridge, as you can see from it's package and different features it may well have different chipset in it.  Well finally I found a use for this old repeater.

[Bobby Isosceles]

I think the only difference between the Linksys "repeater" and the linksys "router/switch" is firmware; the DD-WRT unlocks the full functionality for what is, after all, the same circuit board/guts

but enough of this let us speak of the sexy chinese.

[jay-ell]

This thread is all, CHING CHONG WING WONG

[Thomas Pain]

This thread is all, CHING CHONG WING WONG

okay you know how you can download updates for your router or your toaster or your phone or whatever like when they fix a bug in the software for the device they release an update

well I had a repeater which is kinda like a range extender for your wireless network, and I took and uploaded an update to it that was the update for a bridge...

kind of like if you had a ford, and you ran an update for a chevy, and then after that your ford turned into a chevy

only I didn't have a ford instead of a ford I had a repeater, and then after that it was a bridge (a chevy)

a bridge is what you would use if you want to connect something to your wireless network (like your cat) but that something doesn't have an wireless connection, but it has an appropriate orifice for the connection of an ethernet cable.  or it could even be a usb cable or whatever.  but generally it's ethernet.  except for when it's usb, which is kinda dumb.

now why the hell an access point can't work as a bridge... hmm... I guess it's 'cause the bridge is operating somewhere around OSI layer 2, right, and an access point is all the way up at layer 7 or whatever it is?  Is that it?  huh.  I'm not exactly sure to be honest. There should be like a video I can watch or a pill I can take to understand all this stuff. 

[Bobby Isosceles]

The AP *can* work as a bridge. Cisco disables it for their consumer-level gear. The hardware supports it, which is why the DD-WRT can do repeater/bridging as well as AP. The equivalent cisco gear (think Lexus to your Toyota or Mercury to your Ford) does this natively.

[Thomas Pain]

Out of the box, without dd-wrt, the linksys AP does work as a bridge, but only in conjunction with a linksys (and also linkcysco?) router.

that right there is totally insane.  I wonder how the thing goes about deciding which routers it will bridge and which it won't.  Is that possible with the standards in place, or is linksys mixing in a little bit of proprietary stuff in there? 

[Bobby Isosceles]

Out of the box, without dd-wrt, the linksys AP does work as a bridge, but only in conjunction with a linksys (and also linkcysco?) router.

that right there is totally insane.  I wonder how the thing goes about deciding which routers it will bridge and which it won't.  Is that possible with the standards in place, or is linksys mixing in a little bit of proprietary stuff in there? 

There is a DD-WRT checkbox "turbo" - it is some sort of linksys proprietary compression thing, the same as "SpeedBoost" or whatever. That is why it will bridge only with linksys/cisco stuff, because of the proprietary stuff.

DD-WRT just unlocks the ability to do it without the proprietary stuff, etc.

[Thomas Pain]

oh, I see... yeah that makes sense... it's proprietary on both ends of the link.  Yeah silly me I was kinda assuming it was just proprietary on the bridge side of the link, and I was like, how can the bridge know it's hooking up to brand X or not without the other end of the link deviating from the standard?  (Since it seems unlikely that the standard would afford , even unintentionally, any way to identify the brand of router.) 

But that's cool since the router side isn't pretending to conform to the standard while still deviating from it in some small measure.

I suppose there's a fair number of people who have a linksys router, who read the verbiage on the linksys bridge box, and who then assume that they have to get a linksys bridge in order to bridge to their router.

it's bad enough that so many routers etc are such crap to begin with, but then you get a manufacturer going even further to screw consumers over with something like this. 

It's like linksys looked at the action the inkjet manufacturers were getting with their cartridge scams, and they went 'hmmm...'  how can we get a piece of that?

My worst experience with a router was I had a net gear router that had had pretty blue lights.. and, whenever my DSL modem would get rebooted, there would be a slight delay before the DSL modem's DHCP server would kick in and serve the router an IP... and so I guess the router would default to something, or I dunno... but in any case, the router would decide that there was an IP conflict... and it would reset it's internal IP from a 192.x.x.x to something like 10.0.0.1...  this was problematic because for instance, my printer's IP is manually set so that my printer drivers can find it... and so then my printer would be on a different subnet or whatever you call it from my router...

this was so infuriating, because, it's like, if I set my router to a given IP range, I kinda want it to stay fixed in that setting.. ya know... that's the whole concept behind a fixed IP, right? 

but no, net gear routers are uber awesome.. they know what settings you want better than you do, and they're gonna enforce that too! 

So it's like... all these companies... and especially the companies that make the various GPS stuff... especially the PC-based GPS... garmin... who else..  Delorme...  If someone murdered their entire executive management teams, I don't think that society, as a whole, would really miss them, you know.  It might create a vacuum that could potentially be filled by people who actually want to make technology... that... doesn't... suck...