Wireless bridge connection question

[Monolith]

I have a business class road-runner connection in one of my office buildings. My boss just purchased a building about a 150' away. I have line of sight to the window where his office is from the wiring closet where our wireless AP is. We're are using off the shelf linksys routers & AP's for our network and have one wireless access point which connects to a linksys router in the basement. My boss went and bought a linksys wireless router (G like our AP) and installed it in his building. What he wants me to do is have his router pull an IP from my access point. Now I couldn't figure out how to have his router act as an access point to bridge the connection. If I understand correctly, the AP we have could act as a bridge, but it's hard-mounted and I can't take it out. Any suggestions? I'm not sure if I explained it correctly, but to put it simply, I need to connect these two buildings wirelessly and then run a wireline network inside each building. I currently have a Wireless AP & a wireless router for the satellite office.


(Satellite Office) + Wireless G Router bridge to (Central Office) + Wireless G AP

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

 

[JackMDS]

Access Point in the Hardware closet? :shocked: Where is the Antenna?

If the AP is used for local Wireless communication it is in Gateway Mode.

Wireless Cable/DSL Router is also in Gateway mode.

Gateway Mode can not talk to Gateway mode, hence the Wireless Router will not receive signal from the AP.;:thumbsdown:

If you are a Home user that wants to save every penny you can buy an additional Driverless Bridge (like Linksys WET11) and plug it to a regular port in the New Linksys Router. Pending the envioroment the WET11 will receive the signal and will relay it to the Wireless Router.:thumbsup:

BTW. If the original Access Point is 802.11b the new Linksys will not be able to use the 802.11g.;:thumbsdown:

All of the above is nice and dandy; however, you are talking about a business with two building. I would spend few hundreds $$$ and do it the right way, with independent Access Points, Bridging and using directional Antennae. :beer:

Link to: Wireless Network - Configuration Modes.

:sun:

 

[ktwebb]

BTW. If the original Access Point is 802.11b the new Linksys will not be able to use the 802.11g.;

Huh? Unless I am just not understanding. If he has a workgroup bridge associating back to the original AP, then it would uplink the second AP via the integrated switch. Now yeah, he would be limited to the backbone link back to the parent location, but any .11g client associated to the second AP , assuming it's also .11g, would associate at 54 Mbps, or whatever the environment would allow, and transfer data on that segment at the applicable data rate. It wouldn't be limited in that regard by the link from bridge to parent AP.

 

[Monolith]

So all the hardware I have is Linksys & all the wireless hardware is the G standard. The issue I have is, if I can get the AP talking to the router, at the other end, will the AP still be able to act as an AP for employees in the existing office network in bridge mode?

What confuses me is what IP the router will get from the AP at the primary location and what IP's will it assign? I guess I don't really need a router at the other end, just a way for my primary router to assign IP's via the AP bridge connection.

The problem with getting another business class line to the second location is that we want to be able to share printers etc and have the remote location tap into our network resources. Plus we have more bandwidth than we need so why not just share it - right!

 

[JackMDS]

The AP in bridge mode will not talk to the employees in the same location, and will not talk to a Wireless Router either. It will talk only to another Access Point in bridge mode.

I know it is confusing because the Entry Level Marketers (pim**s) call a Module that is a Wireless Client card without drivers a Bridge as well.

If every thing is Linksys and 150? between the antennae is really clear.

Get this: http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=33&scid=35&prid=615

Plug the WET54GS5 to the Linksys Wireless Router at the second site (through a regularPort, leave the WAN open). Disable DHCP in the WET54GS5 and the second Router, and it should work.

Read the link in my first post it will clarify the Modes issue.

:sun: