[GTALUG] Second router as wireless ethernet bridge

[Thomas Milne]

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 7:10 PM, Thomas Milne
<thomas.bruce.milne at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's another project I'm working on that is driving me around the bend.
>
> Sorry this is such a long story...
>
> A computer in our basement has no wireless, so instead of running a
> long cable to it, I wanted to put a router beside it and have it
> connect to that router by ethernet, and then have that router connect
> to the main one over wireless. No, I did not plug the computer into
> the WAN port... ;-)
>
> I have an old Linksys router WRT54GL v. 1.1 running Tomato 1.28, and
> my main router, the Buffalo N600 which has DD-WRT.
>
> According to about a hundred different howto's it should be very simple.
>
> I set the second router to an IP outside the DHCP range of the first,
> and set also set it to use the first router as gateway and DNS. I also
> set the SSID and password the same, and also the type of security
> used. Oh, and obviously I set the second router as 'Wireless Ethernet
> Bridge'.
>
> router 1 is 192.168.11.1, router 2 is 192.168.11.2
>
> both have 255.255.255.0 as subnet mask
>
> Router 1 gives out addresses starting at 192.168.11.5
>
> Am I correct in assuming that DHCP broadcasts should be relayed by the
> second router? In wireless bridge mode it doesn't appear to even have
> the option of offering DHCP...
>
> I noticed that the Buffalo will let you set up a virtual interface, so
> I tried using that with no security at all.
>
> I also found something here:
>
> http://www.cnet.com/how-to/reuse-an-old-router-to-bridge-devices-to-your-wireless-network/
>
> that said I should set the second router to operate as a router and
> not as a gateway so I changed that.
>
> Still no ping response from google.com :-\
>
> The only thing I can think of is that maybe the firewall settings are
> wrong on the second router, running Tomato.
>
> Respond to ICMP is unchecked, Allow Multicast is unchecked, NAT
> Loopback is set to Forwarded Only, and Enable SYN cookies is
> unchecked.
>
> Help!
>
Oh, I should also say I set both routers to use the same wireless
network mode, G. Some howtos said they had to uses the same channel,
some said different channel. I have tried both. I also tried setting
the second router as gateway, not router, because of this:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/networking/howto-connect-two-wireless-router-wirelessly-bridge-with-open-source-software/

which at least was using a Tomato router so most of it had the same options.

It's very hard when there are so many conflicting instructions :-/

-- 
Thomas Milne