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ghstbstr65
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Wireless Bridge?

Tue Aug 03, 2010 8:45 pm

Ok, so i'm moving in with someone and have a question...I will be living upstairs, the wireless router is downstairs and there is no good way to run a hard wire. I was wondering if a wireless bridge would be a good solution to have internet in my room? I would like to run internet from the bridge to a 360 and my gaming computer. Will the bridge be fast enough for xbox live and steam? The hardwired computer downstairs downloads at 15mbps and upload of 1mbps.
 
notfred
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Wed Aug 04, 2010 8:16 am

Yes a wireless bridge should be a good solution. If the setup is anything above "B" i.e. "G" or "N" then I think you will find the Internet connection a bottleneck before the wireless connection as long as you have good signal and no interference. I would check the signal and speeds first with a normal wireless PC (e.g. a laptop) before I went out and purchased a bridge just to make sure.
 
ghstbstr65
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Wed Aug 04, 2010 2:48 pm

Would the Linksys WRT54GL be the best choice? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833124190
 
notfred
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Wed Aug 04, 2010 3:32 pm

I don't know if you can get a WRT54GL to run as a wireless bridge without going to 3rd party firmware. The linksys page http://linksys.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/lin ... faqid=4194 only talks about the access points and not about routers running as a bridge. Grabbing a pair of WAP54Gs and following those instructions should get you going though, or you may want to dig around further to find another manufacturer that does a wireless bridge that will operate with whatever the access point that is currently there.
 
Captain Ned
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Wed Aug 04, 2010 3:48 pm

notfred wrote:
I don't know if you can get a WRT54GL to run as a wireless bridge without going to 3rd party firmware.

Tomato firmware allows a GL to act as a wireless Ethernet bridge along with bringing a lot of other toys to the party.
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drsauced
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Wed Aug 04, 2010 4:45 pm

Tomato even offers to be a wireless client for routers that aren't into bridging. Ideally you would run two WRT54GL's with Tomato so you can run as AP+Bridge mode, so they can connect as bridges and then you can still be wireless.
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ghstbstr65
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Wed Aug 04, 2010 6:16 pm

Well, i was gonna use the router with dd-wrt and run it as a bridge to the current router that is already in place. Would that work? There is already a wireless router in place and i would prefer not to mess with that
 
Captain Ned
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Wed Aug 04, 2010 6:21 pm

ghstbstr65 wrote:
Well, i was gonna use the router with dd-wrt and run it as a bridge to the current router that is already in place. Would that work? There is already a wireless router in place and i would prefer not to mess with that

Either Tomato or DD-WRT will do what you need. I prefer Tomato, but that's more a matter of personal preference than any real performance/features reasons.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
ghstbstr65
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Wed Aug 04, 2010 6:26 pm

Alrighty, i will look into tomato! will a bridge work with security? i believe it was wpa/psk
 
notfred
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Wed Aug 04, 2010 6:49 pm

Yes it should do. The security is at a different level in the stack from the bridging so there shouldn't be any adverse interactions there.
 
ghstbstr65
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Wed Aug 04, 2010 6:54 pm

Ok thanks alot for your help
 
SnowboardingTobi
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Sun Aug 08, 2010 9:46 pm

Just yesterday I went out and bought a Netgear WNR3500L router and installed the Tomato USB firmware (mod version of the Tomato firmware). I did this to create a wireless bridge for connecting up the TV and PS3 to take advantage of 802.11n connection speeds. Previously when streaming HD videos from my computer down to the PS3 over 11g the videos would stutter, but now that it's connected through the wireless bridge at 11n, everything is streaming down just fine.

FYI, the wireless bridge is connecting to a DLink DIR-655.

This is the first time I've ever installed a 3rd party firmware on a router and I'm happy to say everything went without a hitch.
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Sat Aug 14, 2010 12:53 am

SnowboardingTobi wrote:
Just yesterday I went out and bought a Netgear WNR3500L router and installed the Tomato USB firmware (mod version of the Tomato firmware). I did this to create a wireless bridge for connecting up the TV and PS3 to take advantage of 802.11n connection speeds. Previously when streaming HD videos from my computer down to the PS3 over 11g the videos would stutter, but now that it's connected through the wireless bridge at 11n, everything is streaming down just fine.

FYI, the wireless bridge is connecting to a DLink DIR-655.

This is the first time I've ever installed a 3rd party firmware on a router and I'm happy to say everything went without a hitch.

Sorry for being off topic, but you still need to do the 2-step dd-wrt dance with Tomato still, right?
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SnowboardingTobi
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Re: Wireless Bridge?

Sat Aug 14, 2010 4:01 am

Flying Fox wrote:
Sorry for being off topic, but you still need to do the 2-step dd-wrt dance with Tomato still, right?


I did install dd-wrt first prior to putting Tomato on. I basically followed these instuctions:
http://www.myopenrouter.com/article/18972/Installation-and-Quick-Review-of-Tomato-1.27.9045-BETA-10-Firmware-for-WNR3500L

Not really sure why I couldn't flash directly to Tomato, but it was no biggie putting dd-wrt first and then Tomato.
///_-)

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