How to create WDS wireless link between two home wireless routers

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I have a Netgear wireless router (DG834Gv3) plugged into my broadband internet connection and hard-wired into my main PC. I recently bought a Bufallo Router / Wireless Access Point (WHR-HP-G54) and am trying to set this up so that it extends the range of my wireless network, and enables me to hard-wire other PCs, etc into it.

The problem that I have is that I can't seem to get my Buffalo Wireless Access Point to see the network. There is a "Bridge" mode on it, which I have set. The main router is configured with DHCP and I've tried setting the router with both a fixed IP address and to get a dynamic one – neither seems to make any difference.

There is a "WDS Mode" setting on the main router, which I've set it to "Wireless Point-to-point Bridge", but that doesn't seem to make any difference.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be, or even any steps I could take to identify the problem?

Best Answer

Traditional "WDS" wireless links between wireless infrastructure devices require a bunch of manual setup, because the WDS-related sections of the 802.11 spec never specified an autonegotiation mechanism for WDS links.

  1. Put both devices on the same channel so they can talk to each other.
  2. Put the devices within range of each other.
  3. In the WDS configuration of each device, put the other box's wireless MAC address (BSSID). If either device doesn't have a mode that mentions "WDS" and a place to put the other device's BSSID, then that device probably doesn't support true traditional WDS, so you'll have to figure out what kind of wireless backhaul mode it does support, and see if you can use that.
  4. Set the exact same security mode and key(s) on both devices. If using WEP and the UI shows you spots for 4 keys, make sure you enter all 4 keys correctly on both devices, and the selection for which key to use as the default multicast key is the same.
  5. If using WPA-PSK or WPA2-PSK (A.K.A. "WPA[2] Personal") with an 8-63 character passphrase, make sure the wireless network name (SSID) is the same on both devices, because the wireless network name is one of the things that gets hashed along with the passphrase to create the actual key. If you're using a 64 hex-digit value as your key, then you're entering your own actual key directly and not using a passphrase, so you don't have to worry about SSID hashing.
  6. Make sure that other Wi-Fi/radio settings are the same for both devices.
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