Router Wrangling

My new apartment has a cable hookup in the living room, but Tess (my desktop computer) is on the other side in the office. I had a similar problem at the old place, and solved it by bridging two wireless routers. I end up being able to physically connect Tess and the 360 to the routers at either end as well as fill my house with “the why-fys.” This time around I decided to modify the solution a bit—if you’re interested in how I did this, read on; otherwise, feel free to skip to the bottom and leave comments.

I’m using two Linksys WRT54G routers (a revision 3 and and a revision 4) to create a Wireless Distribution System. Unfortunately this isn’t something natively supported by the routers’ firmware, so some form of third-party firmware is required. This time I opted to switch from HyperWRT + Thibor to the actively updated and feature-rich DD-WRT. Flashing the routers is a delicate process and the documentation is full of links to documentation admonishing you to read the documentation.

There isn’t much to add to that, except that they love their hard resets, so I used a timer to ensure the procedure lasted the full ninety seconds. Also remember that at least for these revisions of this router, it is very important to flash the mini version first. After that worked I reflashed to the full build.

As for settings, I essentially duplicated this list. Remember that you will need to physically connect to both routers while you’re setting this up. Once they start talking to each other you should be able to access both when connected to either one (it’s always a bad idea to try and change settings if you’re connected wirelessly).

Router 1

Basic setup:
IP: 192.168.1.1
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
DHCP Server: Enabled

Wireless Settings:
Make sure all units are using WPA2 Personal AES encryption, the same SSID, and the same wireless channel.
On the WDS tab set to “LAN” mode and enter the MAC address from the second router.
Under advanced settings set preamble to Auto.

Router 2

Basic setup:
Connection type: Disabled
IP: 192.168.1.2
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DHCP Server: Disabled (also uncheck all 3 boxes in DHCP section [Use DNSMasq for DHCP/Use DNSMasq for DNS/DHCP-Authoritative])

Wireless settings:
Again, make sure all units are using WPA2 Personal AES encryption, the same SSID, and the same wireless channel.
On the WDS tab set to ‘LAN’ mode and enter MAC address from the first router.
Under advanced settings set preamble to Auto.

Services:
Disable DNS masq and WAN traffic counter.

Security:
Disable SPI firewall.

A couple of other notes: If you’re going to be using a system like this with Bittorrent, it’s helpful to decrease the TCP and UDP timeout settings. A lot of folks recommend setting them at 120s, but if you’re also using the AIM protocol you’ll get random disconnects. I ended up setting mine at 600s on the advice of this guide, and things have been working well. Oddly enough, if you check “Assign WAN port to switch” on the distal router, it will cause Windows 7 Homegroup computers to fail to see each other.

It’s a pretty great setup and it eliminates the need to run coax or RJ45 cables from one room to the other. w00t!