I decided that a wireless bridge from my study through to the other side of the house, serving my dining room and garage might be a good idea. So I researched the technology and settings quite extensively and found that there are many misconceptions and misguided people out there trying to do just this. A prime situation for writing an article on it…

Introduction

I guess I’d better describe what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it. This might give you a good idea about whether or not you’d also want to do a similar thing.

I currently have a wireless N router which is connected to my broadband modem, this router has two computers attached via LAN cables and it talks wirelessly with 1 or 2 other computers depending on what’s in use. So all in all a fairly normal home network these days. Due to the location of the broadband modem and the wired computers, i.e. my study, the wireless modem is on the far left side of the house. This creates a strong wireless signal over that side but limits the use of the wireless over on the right side of the house, particularly in the garage which has thick outside walls.

Why do I need wireless in my garage? Of course I don’t need wireless in my garage but if I’m working in there modding a PC or doing other jobs it would certainly be nice to be able to access the internet for radio, football scores etc while I work. Also on the right side of the house is my dining room and this is where I host LAN gaming evenings from time to time. On these occasions it would be nice to have some wired LAN connections available to plug into for gaming while also having internet access for game updates and patches.

Product Type Research

So the device I need is a router/switch type device with some wired LAN ports, which will wirelessly connect to my main router and ideally at the same time wirelessly connect to other devices/computers. After a whole load of research I decided that products that were stated as being ‘wireless repeaters’ or ‘wireless bridge’ generally had the ability to connect to the main modem and offer wireless connection for other devices but wouldn’t offer additional wired connections. For some this might do but for my application, not quite the ticket.

So I require more of a router type device then. True, but a router setup in router mode is going to be active as a DHCP server and try to assign IP addresses to it’s own sub-domain. What I want is for the main router to run the DHCP end of things and have this new device just acting as a bridge. So I need a wireless router that can also act as a bridge or rather in the spec terms for routers it needs to have a bridging mode.

This is the point that people surfing the net and discussing on forums etc start to get a little confused. A wireless router will often be described as having a bridging mode when it supports wired bridging. People see that it’s a wireless router and assume that the mention of bridging means that it will support wireless bridging, this is not usually the case. A wired bridging mode will allow you to disable DHCP in the router’s setup so that it can bridge a wired section of network without trying to configure any connected devices itself, configuration of connected devices is left to another router elsewhere.

As it happens there’s a nice little acronym that we can look out for – WDS which stands for Wireless Distribution System. This is the function that we need our router to support and if it does support it then we should be able to achieve the initial goal. Bear in mind though that your main router will also need to support WDS too, fortunately my Sitecom WL-308 gaming router does, however many cheaper models of router won’t. WDS is not a feature only found on high end expensive routers however, if you check carefully and spend some time researching then you will come across some cheaper low end routers that do indeed support WDS.

Some of the cheaper WDS router options

If you fancy ebay as your source then you can usually pick up the Minitar MWGAR for around £30-£40 which supports 802.11b and g. I haven’t tried this router as a wireless bridge but the Minitar website lists WDS as a feature of the MWGAR product.

If you want support for 802.11n then there’s currently a router from Tenda which you can buy from ebuyer. Again it’s not one that I’ve tried personally but it states WDS as a feature and ebuyer are excellent for returns if you receive it and it doesn’t connect up.

However, Tenda and again ebuyer, are offering a cut price 802.11n router that will supports speed of up to 150mbps. This isn’t the full 300mbps that you can theoretically achieve on a full n router but for less than £15 it’s a real bargain. Again this isn’t one I’ve tried, well not yet at least. This is however the one that I plan on buying and as such expect to see a review on here at some point.

One thing that will interest me is how well it integrates into a full n network, whether or not I can have my main network router running at 300n as a preferential hub and then the 150n router for those devices that can’t get full 300n off the main router. Or maybe I’ll just find that the whole network gets reduced to 150n, either way for a current price of £12.50 it’ll be fun finding out.

The final option I’m going to cover here could for some people be even cheaper than the £12.50 Tenda router. If you have an old router lying around that you no longer use, after an upgrade from 802.11g to 802.11n for example. You might be able to upgrade its firmware to support WDS by using the third party DD-WRT firmware. I have an old router but unfortunately mine isn’t supported so it will continue to live in the garage until required for emergency cover.

Popularity: 3% [?]