How do you setup a wireless bridge?

coylemj

I have a BT Voyager 2110 in my front hall connected to my DSL line and it's working fine, I can connect to it from my laptop and iTouch using Wi-Fi no problem. I have a TV and Blu-Ray player in the main room, both of them have Ethernet ports and I'd like to connect them with cables into my old Eircom Netopia 2247 and setup a wireless bridge between the Netopia box and the Voyager 2210.

I have looked at the menus on the Netopia and while I can see a setting for bridge mode, there's a lot of gobbledygook about RFC and PP and stuff that I don't understand, plus I can't see anywhere to tell the Netopia the SSID and password to allow it to talk to the Voyager.

Has anyone done this with these or similar boxes?

vibe666

"bridge mode" and "wireless bridge" are two totally different things, sorry.

you can't do what you want to do with what you currnetly have got (wirelessly).

you *may* however be able do it by running an ethernet cable between the two boxes if the second one (the one not managing your internet connection) has DHCP etc. turned off.

if you don't think running a cable is going to be practical for you, then you might want to consider powerline ethernet adapters or just moving your voyager closer to the TV and running an extension cable (which may, or may not affect your internet speed).

there's several ways of solving your problem, but most of them will cost you money one way or another, the cheapest option is going to be a phoneline extension for your modem and prices are going to go up from there.

you could buy a dedicated wireless bridge, but they normally only have one ethernet port and they're not cheap so by the time you've bought two of them, you'd have been better off just buying a wireless router with wireless bridging capabilities in the first place.

about €40 will get you a linksys wrt54g which has 4 ethernet ports on it. you can put a 3rd party firmware on *almost all of* them (check the model number before purchase) which will allow you to use it as a wireless bridge. look for the "DD-WRT" or "Tomato" custom 3rd party firmwares for the wrt54g which you can download and install for free, assuming you get the right hardware revision of the wrt54g.

you can spend a little more and buy one off ebay with these firmwares pre-installed as it can be a little tricky (or impossible if you're really unlucky) to get it installed on some models of the wrt54g.

think about it and decide what way you think you might want to go and we can help you make the right choices.

of course someone will be along shortly to tell you that i'm wrong and you should do it a different way, but that's part of the fun of the forums.

ntlbell

linksys do a dedicated "bridge" pretty cheap

probably find one on ebay

nilhg

I'm presuming you want to set up two wireless access points in WDS mode, as Vibe666 has said I'd doubt very much if it'll work with your existing gear, ideally you'd want to be buying two matched APs which explicitly support it. I have two buffalo units connecting my and my brothers house over a distance of about a KM, (they are in dedicated antennas) they've worked flawlessly since they were put up.

What you want can be done but you need to plan it out and be sure the gear supports it.

coylemj

vibe666 wrote: »

"bridge mode" and "wireless bridge" are two totally different things, sorry.

about €40 will get you a linksys wrt54g which has 4 ethernet ports on it. you can put a 3rd party firmware on *almost all of* them (check the model number before purchase) which will allow you to use it as a wireless bridge. look for the "DD-WRT" or "Tomato" custom 3rd party firmwares for the wrt54g which you can download and install for free, assuming you get the right hardware revision of the wrt54g.

Thanks for that reply. A long Ethernet or phone cable is not really an option, long term I expect to switch to UPC Broadband (already a cable TV customer) and will have a cable modem with a few Ethernet ports behind the TV which will solve all my problems but in the meantime I'll probably buy that Linksys box, I've read about the mod available on the web so will give it a go.

lambchops

Hate to be the one to burst your bubble here but you need to be absolutly sure that it is in fact network ports on your tv and blu-ray player.
Sometimes a manufacturer will have an rj-45 connection somewhere on there equipment as a means for an engineer to get access to the devices internal programming. It's exactly the same way an IT engineer would access something like a business level router or managed switch. They're not even wired the same way as a network connection in the majority of cases and require special cables.
I know from my own tv that it has an rj-45 that's covered by a little pull out tab that was expressly labled in the manual as a maintenance port.

coylemj

lambchops wrote: »

Hate to be the one to burst your bubble here but you need to be absolutly sure that it is in fact network ports on your tv and blu-ray player.
Sometimes a manufacturer will have an rj-45 connection somewhere on there equipment as a means for an engineer to get access to the devices internal programming. It's exactly the same way an IT engineer would access something like a business level router or managed switch. They're not even wired the same way as a network connection in the majority of cases and require special cables.
I know from my own tv that it has an rj-45 that's covered by a little pull out tab that was expressly labled in the manual as a maintenance port.

Thanks for the warning but they are usable Ethernet ports, in the case of the Blu-Ray player it's for s/w upgrades and the BD-Live feature, the TV can also download s/w upgrades and has a built-in web browser. I've already used the port on the Blu-Ray player to download a s/w upgrade but it required a 10m Ethernet extension cable to run to the router in the hall.