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These are Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 AirStations, which can be used as boring old wireless access points, or bridges, or extenders, or repeaters, apparently.
Scenario 1. Large house, CAT-6 sockets on ground floor, 2nd floor, 3rd floor and 4th floor, each connected to router on ground floor. Want to plug a Buffalo into each of these sockets, and have them form a lovely seamless wireless network, such that a person can walk from floor to floor without having to log in to a different WiFi connection on each floor. It just connects to the nearest, invisibly.
Scenario 2. Same large house, but no cabling. First Buffalo plugged in to router on ground floor. 2nd Buffalo on 2nd floor, 3rd on 3rd, etc. Each one picks up the signal of the other(s) and strengthens/extends it by re-broadcasting it.
Is scenario 2 possible or have I just made it up?
And why doesn't scenario 1 work? :) I struggled with exactly it all day today. I could connect to the wireless LAN fine but it wouldn't assign a DHCP address. Once I removed all devices but one, it was fine. DHCP server is the aforementioned router.
When I try the same thing here at home, a cut-down version with just 2 Buffalos, it stops my damn router from working! I'm obviously doing something wrong, but buggered if I know what.
Bleeding forehead. Trying to find other users of same devices having same issues.
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Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 20:39 10/07/09
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Deleted User Account - 21:42 10/07/09
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Deleted User Account - 21:47 10/07/09
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Deleted User Account - 21:53 10/07/09
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 12:24 11/07/09
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It's a damn big house, and the walls/floors seem to be made of kryptonite.
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 12:49 11/07/09
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1. They don't, or rather, there aren't any 11n devices available. It's a huuuuge London house, with pool, belonging to a lady who is dripping in money. It's quite obscene, but that's another story.
2. Oh. I clever.
No they are getting to the router via a switch. Shirley that shouldn't make a difference though?
Loads of DHCP addresses free at the router. Originally I set the WAPs to fixed IPs, in the same subnet as the rest of the LAN. Then I read in the Buffalo 'documentation' that one of the devices should have a DHCP address, but whether that means exactly one, or at least one, or up to one, who knows. Anyway setting one to DHCP made no difference.
The docs also insist that the same WEP key is used (fair enough) and the same channel. So it forces you to disable auto channel selection before you can enable WDS.
Once you enable WDS you have to tell all the devices about each other by entering the MAC addresses of the WiFi interface of each device, into the config utility for every other device. (It was actually 5 WAPs so I had to enter 20 sodding MAC addresses, and after each one the damn WAP insists on a reboot which takes around 30 seconds, before you can enter the next. One of the WAPs should really act as a WAP-master and program up all the others. Sigh.)
The docs also say you should give the WAPs the same SSID, also fair enough.
There is no MAC address control (yet) on the WiFi network.
One thing that confuses me is that the WiFi side of the WAP doesn't seem to have a settable IP address, just the ethernet side.
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Deleted User Account - 18:12 11/07/09
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 18:45 11/07/09
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I tihnk the switch isn't as clever as you think. It's just a dumb-assed 8-port 10/100 unmanaged thing, nothing clever. Level who?
Good to think of the WiFi part of the WAP devices as a switch. Nice.
The switch points machines wired into it to the router for DHCP no problem, so it should be pointing the WAPs there too.
Thanks for your offer to have a fiddle. I'll see if I can post the settings. Maybe in 'another place' though.
There are "draft" n devices available now (have been for a while), most are hopefully flashable in case of any significant change to the n spec before official launch, which is December this year, apparently. The WHR-HP-G54 is a High Power 'g' device, with a built in amplifier, and MIMO, and is apparently very good, and easy to configure. Pah.
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Simon - 21:18 11/07/09
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This any use?
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-21014_18_0.html
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simon
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Simon - 21:51 11/07/09
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> any use
... that's in the sense of "does this convince you it's fraught with problems?", of course.
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simon
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 22:08 11/07/09
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I figured :-)
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Deleted User Account - 22:40 12/07/09
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 12:12 13/07/09
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Mmmm, very interesting... thanks.
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 22:07 11/07/09
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Frustratingly it's dealing with Linksys rather than Buffalo, but an interesting thread nonetheless and it's prompted me to look at the firmware... apparently there are some 3rd party Linux based firmwares for these WAPs that are better than the manufacturer's firmware. Which wouldn't be hard.
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Simon - 13:13 14/07/09
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Another interesting article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/10/ofcom_mass_wi_fi/
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simon
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Deleted User Account - 15:31 14/07/09
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Deleted User Account - 18:05 15/11/09
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 19:14 15/11/09
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No. I've tried once since, and given up again.
And I was using two identical Buffalos, which should be easier than two different makes.
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Deleted User Account - 19:23 15/11/09
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 19:31 15/11/09
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Have you considered those terribly cunning but horribly glitchy ethernet-over-mains things? You could use two of them to connect the second device as a simple WAP, rather than a bridge / extender of the first, by using the mains as a virtual ethernet cable right back to the switch/router.
I tried this at a customer's house the other day. Didn't work, but turned out to be because the mains sockets were on different ring mains (I nearly said 'subnets'). So if you want a pair of Gigabit* Belkin Powerline whateverthefucktheyares, let me know.
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* Actual maximum speed attainable is 12 bits per second
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Deleted User Account - 20:16 15/11/09
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Deleted User Account - 20:39 15/11/09
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 21:00 15/11/09
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I personally wouldn't worry too much because I don't think the signal survives far beyond the immediate ring, so unless you're in a block of flats the chances of being intercepted are pretty much nil. Plus they are 256 bit AES encrypted end to end. None of my neighbours want to connect to my LAN that badly, don't know about you.
Does the device support that 3rd party firmware, er, dd-wrt? Much better than the original if so.
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Deleted User Account - 21:15 15/11/09
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 21:41 15/11/09
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I have a gazillion metres of CAT6 here if you want some, and some RJ45 plugs & crimp tool.
Or, 30m ethernet cables are less than a tenner from eBuyer, and RJ45-RJ45 female to female adapters (f'narr!) are pennies, if you can't be arsed with the crimping scenario.
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Deleted User Account - 21:45 09/12/09
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Deleted User Account - 21:45 09/12/09
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Deleted User Account - 21:45 09/12/09
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Deleted User Account - 21:47 09/12/09
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Deleted User Account - 21:51 09/12/09
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Bruce Ure - 22:02 09/12/09
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And they use Phibes-Runcorn regeneration, of course.
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Re: Wireless repeater / extenders
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Steve - 13:41 10/12/09
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Is that how David Tennant turns into Matt Smith?
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stevepa
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Deleted User Account - 13:28 03/06/10
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