2 posts tagged “wireless”

Wireless!

This is purely for nerds.  You have been warned: extreme geekery ahead!
OK, with that out of the way, on to the obscure acronyms!

I am happy to report that I have just succeeded in setting up WDS between my WRT54G (WDS main) and AirPort Express (WDS remote).  Why?  So that my Express can act as an ethernet bridge.  For now, this allows me to get my Xbox 360 on my wireless network at home, and hopefully it will allow me to add other network clients in the future.

If you search around, you may see lots of posts about how difficult it is to set up WDS between the WRT54G and the Express.  There's a lot of talk about requiring open source firmware packages for the WRT54G.  In my experience, this was unnecessary.

I didn't do diddly-squat to the WRT54G.  On the Express, I changed "Wireless Mode" to "Create a Wireless Network (Home Router)", clicked on the "WDS" tab, and clicked "Enable this base station as a WDS [remote base station]".  For the "Main Airport ID" I put in the wireless MAC address of the WRT54G.

On the Express, there were just a few steps to set everything up:
(The following list is verbose, so don't be discouraged by the number of items.)

1. Switch to the AirPort tab
2. In the "Wireless Mode" drop-down, select "Create a Wireless Network (Home Router)"
3. Click on the "Base Station Options" button
4. Check "Enable Ethernet Port"
5. Switch to the Network tab
   
6. Uncheck "Distribute IP addresses"
7. Switch to the WDS tab
8. Check "Enable this base station as a WDS"
9. In the drop-down that follows, select "remote base station"
10. In the "Main AirPort ID" field, enter the WRT54G's wireless MAC address

That's it.  Click "Update" at the bottom of the screen and your Express will reboot.  When it comes back up, you should be able to attach a wired device to the ethernet port.