This scenario: I have a wifi router connected to the internet and need two access points in separate rooms which provide wired ethernet. So I did a little research about bridged routers and finally decided to do the following: install ddr-wrt firmware on the client routers and set up client bridged connections to the primary router like in this tutorial. Question is: does it work with more than one client router? I tried to google that, but found nothing, so I’m counting on my fellow doper IT guys.
A wireless bridge is basically a wireless ethernet cable. It’s been awhile since I did something like this but when I did the distant end had another router to act as the AP. The two routers in the bridge were unable to be APs. But, for you to do this is pointless as you already have wired ethernet.
I think what you want to look up is mesh networking. Assuming that there is a cable modem and a switch/hub somewhere, the mesh should work.
I was unclear in my OP or simply used the wrong terms: what I need are two separate wifi routers, each connected or bridged, respectively, wireless with one wifi router that serves as access point and which is connected to the internet. These two client routers shall provide the internet connection over their wired ethernet ports to computers in those rooms. It’s the same configuration as here, but with an additional tertiary router connected to the primary router exactly like the secondary in the picture. My question is if this is possible.
I’m sure you can, however, when it comes to networking, I prefer to go as simple as possible. It’s easier to wire, it’s easier to diagnose problems, and less likely to have problems to begin with.
In your situation, I would run a cable to each room. At the end of each cable I would use a switch. They’re cheap, they’re reliable, and most importantly, they’re dumb. No software to break, no GUI for you to deal with etc. As far as you’re concerned, it’s basically just a splitter/power strip for your network cables.
At each switch you can attach a WAP. I just picked up this one. The reason I got this one, specifically, is because you can turn off repeater mode and put it in Access Point mode where you plug a cable into it and instead of extending a wifi signal it creates one there.
My wifi router (at work) is in a horrible, awful spot. Trying to extend it was a lost cause. This gave me the ability to move it out into the open, and turn off the wifi on my router.
There’s no reason why you can’t have one of these at each switch.
In fact, you could, if you so wanted, do it without the wire running to each room. If your wifi signal is strong, and this can pick it up, just put it in extender mode and then you can use the jack to plug a switch into and you’ll be able to plug wired devices in in that room without having to run a separate cable back to your router (personally, I wouldn’t do that, but it’s an option with this device).
Thanks for your suggestions Joey P, I know that running cables to the rooms would be the best solution, but the facility I’m doing this for (it’s a non-profit organsiation I used to work for and I’m doing this as a favor) doesn’t want that and I have to rely on a wireless solution.
Yes!
I’ve done this (a couple of years ago) with Linksys WRT54gl devices running DD-WRT. If you can (for best performance), you’ll want your wired device in the middle of the network, the hub of a hub-and-spoke.
i.e.
Scenario 1 (good)
wireless <-> wired <-> wireless
Scenario 2 (not so good)
wireless <-> wireless <-> wired
Scenario 2 works, but you take a huge performance hit in the process.
And I can say that the WRT54gl devices “bridged” the ethernet ports on the back to the wireless network, so depending on the device, you’ll have a few wired ports that you can use.
The last paragraph/sentence of my post is how you can do that with the same equipment I mentioned at the beginning. The AC750 (I think that’s the one I mentioned), can grab an existing wireless signal, create a new wireless network with it AND give you a wired Ethernet port as well.
You might want to read up on that Amazon link. It’ll probably work for you.
Another thing, I wouldn’t mess with DD-WRT if you’re doing this as a favor. It’s freeware/shareware and there’s no real documentation for it. If something goes wrong, you’re going to be back there fixing it. An out of the box solution will be much easier to work with.
And, not to bring it up again, but those little Netgear extenders have a dead simple GUI and I think you can set them up to allow remote access (so you could maintain them from wherever you are).
I have looked into it, and it looks interesting, but there’s one thing I’m still unclear about. Are the machines connected via switch and the wifi extender on the same LAN as the primary router, or is it a separate network that only shares the internet connection? Or in other words, do these extenders work like a basic wifi repeater with an additional ethernet jack? I have to share network ressources like printers and a NAS through all three rooms, so this is crucial.
Ok, I think I answered my own question by reading the netgear wifi extender’s product description more thoroughly and noticing the two different wifi modes it provides. That’s fine, and I think this will be the way to go for me. Thanks again Joey P and to the others who helped.
I never bridged beyond two, but I don’t see why you should not be able to do so. The only difference that I would expect is that router prime would have no changes, so that would be 198.162.0.1 and then your bridged router would be 198.162.0.100 for the sake of keeping those addresses open between 2 and 99, any router after that would be 198.162.0.300. Other than that, what you do to router two, you have to do to router three.
Declan
Thanks for the confirmation, but I decided to follow Joey P’s advice and use repeaters/extenders. This seems to be the easiest and most economic way. But please allow me one nitpick ( it’s the dope 
): an address 192.168.0.300 is not possible, the segments are 8 bit.
One thing I thought of this morning. I don’t know what you plan to do, but using an extender (IIRC) halves your bandwidth (speed?)*. If they’re just going to connect a computer or two to each one and not doing anything to bandwidth heavy it’s probably not a big concern, but this setup might not work that well if multiple people are going to be streaming videos from a single extender at the same time.
*And not just in a theoretical way, I found this out when I ran a speedtest on my laptop and was getting something like 10-15Mbps, then I connected it directly (wirelessly) to the router and it was over 20. Doing some research, I learned that extenders do this. Now I tell my laptop/phone etc to connect to the router and use the extender only if I get out of range.
I knew about the decreased bandwith, but that’s no concern in my case. The users are supposed to work and not watch streaming videos anyway :D. Seriously, the machines must provide basic net access, but won’t be used for bandwith consuming content or big downloads, it will suffice.
It’ll probably be fine then. I have to admit, I’ve never set a network up like this, but it should work.
Now that I’m thinking about it, the one thing I might look into (or just jump in and try it) would be connecting a switch to the ethernet port. In my head it should be fine, I’m just not totally sure about that one part.
Yeah , my bad .255 is the highest.
Declan
I don’t think that’ll be a problem. This ethernet port on the extender should behave like any other ethernet port in a network, and you can always cascade by switches on a single port (I may be a little bit out of my depth here, and probably there are scenarios where that isn’t true, there certainly is a limit to the number of cascading levels for instance, but in this case I think it wouldn’t make no sense if switching wouldn’t work).
Just an update: I followed Joey P’s advice and ordered two Netgear Repeater/Extenders. Today I did the installation, and everything worked like a charm (except for WPS, but has that EVER worked?), and now we got very good wired ethernet coverage in both rooms via the extenders. So many thanks again Joey P, your advice was golden and saved me much time as well as the facility I did it for some money. You did it for a good cause, trust me, they are a non-profit organisation that helps a lot of needy people, at some points of my life including me, and they deserve support.
Glad it worked out for you.
On a side note, I’ve used WPS, it works, but sometimes it’s tricky. It’s like pairing up bluetooth devices.
It’s funny, I never had problems with bluetooth, but every single time I tried WPS, it failed, with many combinations of routers and client devices. It’s always the same: press WPS button on client device, press WPS button on router within two minutes, and wait for connection…and nothing ever happens. But I’ve been long enough in IT to know that computer quirks are sometimes esoteric: maybe you’re not a bluetooth guy, and I’m not compatible with WPS ;).