Hello all,

I've been using wireless adapters that, although are good in their own right, have not been pumping better than 'Low' signals for a long time. After coming across OpenWRT I had a strange thought, what if I could use OpenWRT on a Linksys WRT54GL to turn it into a wireless adapter, you know, 'dongle' sort of thing, that would connect to another Wireless AP as if it was just a wireless adapter but with a much better range than a normal adapter. Is this setup possible? If so, how easy is it to do? I have not bought a WRT54GL yet, but if it can do what I want it to then that would be beautiful (& I would obviously buy it :-P).

Thank you so much in advance,
Internet.

P.S. - Sorry if this post is in the wrong place but I found it hard determining where questions like these should go as there isn't a forum for stuff that doesn't fit into the other forums... :-)

One mode that can do this is known as "Routed Client Mode".  The WAN is the wireless connection.

In this mode it doesn't resemble a device plugged in as a dongle.  More like CLI tools controlling the router but your machine remains on the LAN.  Not a bad situation, necessarily.

As for the place to post this - it gets complex.  Talking specifically about a WRT54GL means Broadcom which hasn't been much of a priority for Kamikazi.  Whiterussian remains stagnant but still the best for Linksys/Broadcom IMHO.

But in the move to Kamikaze last year, a bad Whiterussian bug was blown-off for "Routed Client Mode" using WPA.  Specifically "sta" mode: https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/1732  But I'm happy because I was able to find and fix this particular problem and I've run it regularly.  Last I knew, "wet" mode connections had a key-change problem.  Anyone wants my fix, I'd be happy to supply it at YOUR risk.

Possibly worse is the HowTo for Whiterussian "Routed Client Mode" may not exist.  Not sure without a little research.

All this may change if the open-source b43 driver for these Linksys/Broadcom units ever gets stable.  I'm not holding my breath - they're getting to be pretty old.

Another alternative is Kamikaze with the older 2.4 kernel (like Whiterussian).  But I've looked at this and all I can say is Whiterussian is far better for my needs on Linksys/Broadcom.

My two cents.  HTH

EDIT: http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Whi … ClientMode
...found the Howto.

(Last edited by Bill_MI on 27 Sep 2008, 16:54)

Wow Bill, your answer was everything I dreamed of! Thanks massively for that .
I'll definitely buy it now - there are probably more powerful/reliable routers but I'm a complete newbie at OpenWRT, although I do have a little experience with Linux. I'll have to post back my results with the HowTo and add to it if I can.

Once again thanks a million man, you have helped me much more than you know

Cheers!
Internet.

Glad to help.

BTW, just last week I rebuilt Whiterussian 0.9 with my own selection of extra packages:
cifsmount, ntpclient, openssh -> openssh-sftp-server, openvpn, tcpdump, CIFS kernel support. And some changes:
wificonf/wificonf.c - my sta fix, dnsmasq  from 2.35 to 2.45 ...and I have a comfy 828k of flash left over after installing nas and wl proprietary Broadcom modules.  The build system still works great!   This is a WRT54G v4 - identical to the WRT54GL.

Good Luck!

(Last edited by Bill_MI on 28 Sep 2008, 16:50)

Hey I've had another thought... As you've shown me, there is a good possibility that I can setup a WRT54GL (that I may buy) to become a client of a wireless network and give that information to eth lan users, correct? Well I was thinking, could I setup the WRT54GL to be a wireless 'repeater' of sorts, of the original WAN connected wireless router? As in: one misc. wireless router connected to internet with the WRT54GL recieving signals in one antenna and sending them out with the other? Or some other way of basically expanding the already existing wireless network?

As for your extra information, thank you very much for that & I might hit you up for that stuff later if you wouldn't mind :-)

Thanks again!
Internet.

I've only used wireless to be an AP, bridge LANs or connect the WAN.  None at the same time.  Maybe someone can confirm what can and can't be done.

Before you get into a WRT54GL maybe you want to get more info on alternatives and what people are doing.  There's a lot going on that isn't on Linksys/Broadcom.  In general, Broadcom is not the most "open source friendly".  I perceive the most friendly as Atheros and someday I'll probably look into them.

I've gone ahead and bought a WRT54GL, I did it because it was cheap, I'm only a beginner and I am willing to upgrade at a later date (after I've gained experience) if I need to, there is lots of documentation for it (as it was the first for OpenWRT) & I want to experiment now (I can't wait!).

Now in a few days time I'll be (hopefully) connecting to my router as if it was the one connected to WAN and not another one :-) Thanks for all your help, and I'll be sure to post about my results.

Edit: I found a website ( http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.c … ion+System ) which explains what I want to do. It's called WDS (Wireless Distribution System), according to the website "OpenWRT should theoretically support WDS" & that the WRT54GL can support WDS using 3rd party firmware (e.g. OpenWRT & X-Wrt). Cool huh?

(Last edited by Internet on 30 Sep 2008, 15:36)

I'm sure this is going to get me points as a kind of bad user, but all this stuff is on the wiki!  Not even just on the wiki encoded in some mysterious format, it's just there!

For whiterussian:
WDS Howto with all kinds of encryption:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Whi … 108008ec23
Clientmode howto:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Whi … ClientMode

For Kamikaze:
WDS... thing... alright, I'll be the first to admit this is far from clear, but if you're investing in a wrt54gl, you should probably use Whiterussian anyway:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Kam … 4454380e17
Clientmode howto:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Kamikaze/ClientMode

And yes, x-wrt is quite neat if you're not a very experienced user.  But the flexibility of straight up linux is almost cooler all on its own

(Last edited by kitscuzz on 30 Sep 2008, 19:42)

You're not a bad user kitscuzz, to be correct, I should be the one who gets points as the bad user as I did not find any of the stuff you have mentioned when I searched through the wiki. Whereas you have kindly given me links directly to the correct information I need - thanks

UPDATE: Hey guys, I recieved my WRT54GL router & flashed the latest X-Wrt whiterussian firmware - tried to setup WDS but then found that it isn't supported on my WAN connected router. Oh well, I'll just have to turn my WRT54GL into a client then

One issue I am having is that I can find my other router via webif^2 (I've only found it twice though) but not on SSH. I use webif^2 for ease of changing settings & SSH for following tutorials on the wiki. The other router is a little while away with walls, trees etc inbetween me and it - could that be interfering or is it bad wireless settings stopping me? Any advice is much appreciated - thankyou

I can't speak from experience as I've never personally used x-wrt, but it may be a few things:

First off, you should probably try changing the channel.  On my routers, the wireless interface is eth1, and so you can run "iwconfig eth1 channel x" and set the channel.  I'm not sure if changing the channel can be applied on the fly (I'm fairly certain it can), but if it doesn't seem to change your results from running "iwlist eth1 scanning", it may not have been applied.  So you can run "ifdown wan" and then run "nvram set wl0_channel=x" then run "ifup wan;/sbin/wifi" then try running iwlist again.  You don't really have to commit that until you actually see what you want (conserving writes to your nvram is important!).

Another thing is that the beacons that you get during any specific period change pretty wildly every time you run it.  In my apartment I tend to have ~7 routers that I consistently see, and then ~30 or so which show up depending on when I look.  I frequently run "iwlist eth1 scanning | grep ESSID" in order to see only the ssids and scan until I see what I want.

Hope that helps.  I wish I knew how to set the router to round-robin around channels, but sadly I do not...

As a side note: yes, poor wireless signal will definitely be a problem, even for these routers.  If you're having a lot of problems seeing it consistently even after setting the channel, then your signal is probably fairly weak.  This doesn't really mean that you can't use it, it simply means that you'll probably have a slower rate than you'd like, and possibly a choppy signal.  If it's really bad, try getting better antennas (do the new wrt54gl support external antennas?)

(Last edited by kitscuzz on 4 Oct 2008, 18:59)

Any activity here?

I have 2 WRT54GL:s runnng X-WRT with WDS. The first one is wired to yet another router wich recieves (wireless) internet and handles local DHCP etc. Everything is working fine except that i wont get any IP when connecting to the second WRT54GL. Anyone got an idea i would be more than happy!

EDIT: Problem solved. Missed ETH1 at second wrt router.

(Last edited by fgh on 22 Mar 2009, 14:41)