network peeps..I need help trying to extend a wifi connection with my router and PC

9

93 saturn sl2

Forum Member
Just moved in to a new house and I can pick up a strong xfinity hotspot signal upstairs. Id like my desktop to pick up the signal and use ICS (internet connection sharing) with my wireless router to rebroadcast a new wifi signal throughout my house. This is just temporary until I can get Comcast out here.

Ive looked at numerous threads online but I cant get it to work.

Ive tried assigning a static ip address to the router and assigning one to the lan connection on my pc as well..nothing....
Left the router and lan dynamic ip..nothing...


What am I doing wrong here? Does the lan need a static ip thats one digit off of the routers ip? Do I use the default gateway number that my wireless card is picking up? This should be that hard to do!

Im using a Dlink dir-655 and the wireless card is one that is built into my desktops mobo. I can access the internet just fine on the desktop, but the router wont rebroadcast any internet of its network.
 
You need to setup your 655 as a repeater bridge. It should be somewhere in the firmware settings. You're going to want to give the 655 a static IP out of the range of the DHCP server on the Comcast unit, and disable DHCP on the 655.
 
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Agree - you're essentially looking to turn your DIR655 router into a wireless bridge.
If you believe the info in the Dlink Forums link below, your router's OEM firmware doesn't support that function.
http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=50738.0

Quick look - DIR-655 (Ubicom chipset) is not supported by OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc. sorry - think you're screwed, unless you have a different router to use.
 
Killjoy said:
Quick look - DIR-655 (Ubicom chipset) is not supported by OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc. sorry - think you're screwed, unless you have a different router to use.
Click to expand...

Ouch. OP can find a second hand router on eBay that will work with one of the above firmwares. Best thing to do is consult the documentation of the various distros listed above and see which units are compatible. Pay attention to the hardware revisions of the routers, as one may work with open source firmware and one may not. OpenWRT (my preference) is the most configurable out of the three, but the least user friendly. Tomato and DD-WRT are both equally user friendly, but DD-WRT works with a much wider range of hardware. Tomato is pretty much for Broadcom based routers only, while DD-WRT and OpenWRT will work with Atheros, Broadcom, and Ralink chipsets.
 
I have that same D-Link and its a real piece of shit. Waiting fro my Asus N66u to show up any day...
 
The Man said:
sweet, thanks Tin.
Click to expand...

No problem. Tons of things you can do with open source firmware. You can monitor traffic and bandwidth, implement QoS (quality of service to give services traffic priority over others), mesh networking, VPN, VLAN, repeater bridging, WDS (wireless distribution system), DNS caching, adjustable antenna power, and captive wifi portals (allows others to connect without accessing network resources). My favorite feature, although not available on Tomato or DD-WRT is DNScrypt. DNScrypt-proxy encrypts the traffic between your home and the OpenDNS servers so your network doesn't get compromised by a man in the middle attack, great deterrent against hackers and the gubmint :lol:
 
Already knew the D-Link wasnt opensource friendly. I may purchase an Asus (forgot what model) and use that. But by time I do that, Ill have my own internet.

The weird thing is I bought this router to work a few months ago and hooked it up to the lan connection coming out of the wall. It worked perfectly without having to change any settings.
 
At work, assuming you connected the work network's Ethernet cable to the WAN port, it would be functioning identically as it would be in a 'normal' home Internet router capacity. e.g. your work's network was the 'ISP' and your wireless clients were 'internal' and being NAT'd. The one possible gotchya would be if your work was using RFC 1918 addressing, as well as the DHCP pool configured on your router, and the subnets happen to collide. e.g. You can't use 192.168.x.x/24 on both the public (WAN) side and internal LAN side of the router at the same time. Otherwise, it should work - yes.

The difference between the above, and what you want to do in your first post, is you want the router to repeat/extend your wifi broadcast domain. In other words, you want it to listen for all traffic on your wifi network (SSID) and then re-broadcast it out - thereby extending the overall coverage. This "listen and retransmit" is called repeating.. and your router's firmware doesn't support that.


If you would've connected work's Ethernet cable to a LAN port, not WAN, it probably wouldn't have worked.... or more likely, work IT would have come tracked you down and given you a smack down. Multiple, different DHCP servers responding to the same subnet is not a good thing... you could potentially kick other users at work off the network. Your wireless clients through your router probably wouldn't have had connectivity anyways, since your router DHCP server likely would have replied to DHCP requests quicker... and misconfigured wireless clients for the work network.



YLWFVR - I find it hard to look past TP-Link. Bang for the buck is normally very good, rock solid stability in my experience, and most are well supported by aftermarket firmware. I've had Gargoyle (OpenWRT) running on a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND (v1) for over a year uptime w/o needing a reboot. 4 gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, 300Mbps wireless, removable/extendable antennas - think I paid $50 new from Amazon. Sure, there's more premium/fancy routers out there, but I for one wouldn't even consider laying down $100-$200 for them. And I can't tell you how many Buffalo/Netgear/Linksys/etc. routers I've either owned, or helped friends & family with, that either needed reset weekly.. or just plain stopped working periodically.

If you're going to run aftermarket firmware (SSL & IPsec VPN functionality are really nice to have!), then I would decide which flavor you're going to run, and then pick proven router hardware based on the user base experiences there.
 
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Killjoy said:
YLWFVR - I find it hard to look past TP-Link. Bang for the buck is normally very good, rock solid stability in my experience, and most are well supported by aftermarket firmware. I've had Gargoyle (OpenWRT) running on a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND (v1) for over a year uptime w/o needing a reboot. 4 gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, 300Mbps wireless, removable/extendable antennas - think I paid $50 new from Amazon. Sure, there's more premium/fancy routers out there, but I for one wouldn't even consider laying down $100-$200 for them. And I can't tell you how many Buffalo/Netgear/Linksys/etc. routers I've either owned, or helped friends & family with, that either needed reset weekly.. or just plain stopped working periodically.
Click to expand...

Yep, same experiences here. Most any router with factory firmware will need a reboot every so often. If you're a heavy downloader, even more frequent reboots will be required. TP-Link is definitely the best bang for the buck at this point in time, and most models will have an open source distro available. My OpenWRT installs only go off during a power outage. Other than that, rock solid stability.

If you're going to run aftermarket firmware (SSL & IPsec VPN functionality are really nice to have!), then I would decide which flavor you're going to run, and then pick proven router hardware based on the user base experiences there.
Click to expand...

Here are compatibility lists for each of the popular firmwares:
OpenWRT: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start
Gargoyle: http://www.gargoyle-router.com/wiki/doku.php?id=supported_routers_-_tested_routers
DD-WRT: http://dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices
Tomato: http://tomato.groov.pl/?page_id=69

eBay is a good place to find second hand routers cheap. My Dlink DIR-825 B1 routers retail for about $100 each, but I got them on eBay for $20 to $30 each used. 3 for the price of 1.
 
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Tin/Killjoy, Don't need wireless. Just standard gigabit wired router. Any particular model I should look at. Thanks
 
YLWFVR said:
Tin/Killjoy, Don't need wireless. Just standard gigabit wired router. Any particular model I should look at. Thanks
Click to expand...

The TP-Link Killjoy uses has gigabit ethernet ports on it, as does the model Dlink I'm using. You can remove the antennas and disable wireless very easy. A standard gigabit router will cost far more than one of these wireless units.
 
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