HOWTO: Use Linksys WRT54G as a wireless ethernet bridge

[jeremycobert]

hey facemask,
i used the alchemy6.0 rca v3018sv as it says on the first post. i used this firmware on both the gateway and client routers. after the main router is running i unhooked my wireless card in my laptop and started working on the client, using the wrt54(client) as the nic card. follow all the steps in post 1, here is a pic of my clients setup.

picture of my client setup

so the first network can use 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.28 then the second network (subnet) starts on 192.168.1.129 through 192.168.1.254.


its easy to forward the ports, i let the client router get ip 192.168.1.2 , on the main router(192.168.1.1) i forward my replaytv sharing port to the clients address x.x.x.2, then on the client i forwad the same port to my replaytv at 192.168.1.151 (you may notice that i start the IP's at x.x.x.150, thats just to keep things straight in my head.

i use grc's shield up to test my port, use the custom probe port and your port number. it will say if its open or hidden.

poopli updater seems to search over the network and its subnet, so i just let it auto add. and its working, along with poopli sharing

dvarchive will only search for RTV's on its network so it has trouble finding it on the other network (the subnet) but you can just tell it where its located and then it will open up you RTV. i runs at about 290KB/s which is close to 300, so im happy with it.

i hope i helped ya,

 

[pat68]

Hi user1234

very nice description. And I managed it to get it working sporadicly.
My configuration:
WAG54G ------- WRT54G ------ PC1

I'm living in an apartment house with 2 other WLAN environments installed. With the settings you described, the WRT will make s short connection to the WAG54G, receive a IP address, but after a short time, it will loose connection and change the channel. It then resides on the channel used by my neighbours WLAN and shows the MAC address of this AP in the wireless status. I use 128bit WEP encryption.
When it works I get ping response times from 20-30ms in average. May this be cause by the WAG54G? I've seen that there are lot of negative statements about this router. But in my opion, it is a practiable, cheap, all-in-one solution (if it works).

Thanks in advance
pat

 

[user1234]

Originally posted by: pat68
Hi user1234

very nice description. And I managed it to get it working sporadicly.
My configuration:
WAG54G ------- WRT54G ------ PC1

I'm living in an apartment house with 2 other WLAN environments installed. With the settings you described, the WRT will make s short connection to the WAG54G, receive a IP address, but after a short time, it will loose connection and change the channel. It then resides on the channel used by my neighbours WLAN and shows the MAC address of this AP in the wireless status. I use 128bit WEP encryption.
When it works I get ping response times from 20-30ms in average. May this be cause by the WAG54G? I've seen that there are lot of negative statements about this router. But in my opion, it is a practiable, cheap, all-in-one solution (if it works).

Thanks in advance
pat

the WRT54G client router will only connect to a router/AP with the specific SSID name that you instruct it to (in step 6 of the howto). But if you have more than one router with the same SSID then it will probably associate with one of them randomly, and maybe even switch to the one with strongest signal. If that is the case, then I suggest you use a unique SSID for the WAP54G and tell the WRT54G to connect to it.

 

[facemask]

Originally posted by: user1234
facemask, I think your proxy_arp is not working. Are you using a slightly different version of the firmware then what I described in the guide ? the thing is that different versions of the firmware use different device designations for each port, so you may need to set up the proxy_arp a little differently. To find out the device name to use for proxy arp (e.g. eth0 or eth1 ir eth2, etc) telnet to the wrt54g and type the command "ifconfig". You should see a list of devices like "br0", "eth1", "vlan0" etc, and next to each one is some information. Look for the device which has an IP address that looks like 192.168.x.y where y is BELOW 128. There should only be one device with such an address. Now you just need to use this device name ito set up the proxy arp. For example, if the device is eth0, then use this command to set up proxy arp:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth0/proxy_arp

Now you can try to ping from the remote PC. btw, after you set up the proxy_arp (hopefully it will finally work), you can do port forwarding very easily by just setting it on the main router (designating the port to forward and the machine to forward it to). There is no need to set up the port forwarding on the client router, as the proxy arp will seamlessly forward anything that is addressed to a device attached to the client router.

ahhhh!!! sorry man...i know jack about proxies and and was just mindlessly following your directions. i do have the version in your original post. and i did just use eth0 in the proxy. i checked ifconfig, and needed to use eth2. changed it and i can ping from my pc on the main router. hooray!

now i just need to figure what i need to do for port fwding to get my ReplayTV tools up and running.

thanks man!

 

[facemask]

Originally posted by: jeremycobert
hey facemask,
i used the alchemy6.0 rca v3018sv as it says on the first post. i used this firmware on both the gateway and client routers. after the main router is running i unhooked my wireless card in my laptop and started working on the client, using the wrt54(client) as the nic card. follow all the steps in post 1, here is a pic of my clients setup.

picture of my client setup

so the first network can use 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.28 then the second network (subnet) starts on 192.168.1.129 through 192.168.1.254.


its easy to forward the ports, i let the client router get ip 192.168.1.2 , on the main router(192.168.1.1) i forward my replaytv sharing port to the clients address x.x.x.2, then on the client i forwad the same port to my replaytv at 192.168.1.151 (you may notice that i start the IP's at x.x.x.150, thats just to keep things straight in my head.

i use grc's shield up to test my port, use the custom probe port and your port number. it will say if its open or hidden.

poopli updater seems to search over the network and its subnet, so i just let it auto add. and its working, along with poopli sharing

dvarchive will only search for RTV's on its network so it has trouble finding it on the other network (the subnet) but you can just tell it where its located and then it will open up you RTV. i runs at about 290KB/s which is close to 300, so im happy with it.

i hope i helped ya,

thanks man...i am new to ReplayTV, just got it about a week ago. ive only done a limited amount of research on dvarchive and i havent heard about grc shield up or poopli...so i have some work to do. youve helped...just need to figure out how to get started. thanks!

btw, i have it setup as user1234 described, so my client is 192.168.1.129. do you know if thats gonna be a problem? im assuming not, but just thought i'd ask.

 

[facemask]

Originally posted by: jeremycobert
its easy to forward the ports, i let the client router get ip 192.168.1.2 , on the main router(192.168.1.1) i forward my replaytv sharing port to the clients address x.x.x.2, then on the client i forwad the same port to my replaytv at 192.168.1.151 (you may notice that i start the IP's at x.x.x.150, thats just to keep things straight in my head.

how do you know which port to fwd to?

Originally posted by: jeremycobert
i use grc's shield up to test my port, use the custom probe port and your port number. it will say if its open or hidden.

what is the point for running this? are you checking to make sure it says it is open?

Originally posted by: jeremycobert
poopli updater seems to search over the network and its subnet, so i just let it auto add. and its working, along with poopli sharing

never heard of this...what is poopli updater for?

*EDIT* - searched for poopli...tried to follow their directions but i cant find a menu they are talking about. i have a 5508...i have no idea how to get a prompt for a port number.

4) When prompted for a port number, enter the number of an unused port on your network. This number should be higher than 1024. 29000 is generally a good choice. Remember this number, it is the "IVS PORT" that must be forwarded to your ReplayTV in your router later.

thanks again...maybe i should be sending you private msgs or start a new thread so i dont hijack this thread with ReplayTV specific questions

 

[facemask]

heres a question for user1234 or anyone else. how can i provide a static IP to my replaytv box on the client router? (im searchin the web for my answers as well, i figure it out i will post so i dont waste anyones time.) thanks.

 

[user1234]

Originally posted by: facemask
heres a question for user1234 or anyone else. how can i provide a static IP to my replaytv box on the client router? (im searchin the web for my answers as well, i figure it out i will post so i dont waste anyones time.) thanks.

that's an easy one. I assume you currently use DHCP in the client router to assign addresses to its attached devices. The problem with DHCP is that it may choose any address in the range you define, and everytime it can choose a different address. Luckily, there is a way to ensure it assign the same address every time - this is called STATIC DHCP. To set it up, use the wrt54g's web interface, and go to Administration::Management screen. Locate the "Static Allocations" text box in the "Dhcpd" section. There you need to type in the desired IP address followed by the MAC address of your device and its name, for example:

192.168.0.130 11:22:33:44:55:66 SLI

Note that it's best to use an address that is not part of your dynamic DHCP address range (but it still must be above 128). In my case, my dynamic DHCP address start at .140 (this is selected on the Setpu::Basic setup scrren), so I use the static .130 address as a static address for my SLI machine. You can add all your devices to the list, thus ensuring they will always have the same address assigned to them.

btw, regarding your port forwarding....now that you got proxy arp working it is very simple to set up the port forwarding. First, let me explain that port forwarding means that an incoming connection on a specific port from the internet to your main router is forwarded to one of the machines on your home network. Normally your router will block all INCOMING connections, but if you set port forwarding then a packet coming on that port will be forwarded. For example, when I want to host an online game (such as UT2004 or Doom3) I run the game server software on one of my PCs, so it is waiting for incoming connections from online gamers who want to join the game (the game server software notifies the central UT2004 server that it is available and ready to host public games). For UT2004 the default port it listens on is 7778 UDP, but of course my main router normally blocks all incoming connections on all ports. So I set up a port forwarding rule on my main router to forward UDP port 7778 to 192.168.0.130 which is the machine running the game server. Most routers have this simple feature to set up port forwarding. You ONLY NEED TO SET UP PORT FORWARDING ON YOUR MAIN ROUTER, even if you want to forward to a device attached to the client router, because in that case the proxy arp will ensure that your main router can connect to the destination machine.

 

[facemask]

awesome!! i actually checked that screen and missed it. once again...thanks a lot!

 

[pat68]

Hi user1234.
Thanks for your advice. I already found the problem, on the WAG54G I had SSID broadcast disabled, enabled again and it works

 

[The Goon]

First off "hello" and secondly would like to thank User1234 for his excellent tut

Right here we go with my problem, my main modem/router is a Belkin F5D7632uk4 and my bridge is a WRT54G, now the only thing i'm using the WRT54G for is for a wireless connection to my modded Xbox in another part of the house. I followed the tut and i was online with the xbox through xbox media centre listening to web radio etc, so the routers are talking fine. The problem i have is i can't FTP into the xbox, the ip addy the xbox is giving me is 192.168.2.140 as my Belkin uses 192.168.2.**. I put the above ip addy into flashfxp but no go. I saw you replied to someone else about this earlier on in the thread but it went "whoosh" over my head lol. The xbox is set up as per the tut except for my main router ip addy and on the Belkin i have 2 wired PC's and 2 wireless pc's with ip addy's going from 2.2 to 2.5.
So basically in n00b terms how to i ftp from my pc on subnet mask 00 to my xbox on subnet mask 128. The PC with flashfxp is 2.2 and my O/S is XP Home.

All help very much appreciated

 

[facemask]

Originally posted by: The GoonSo basically in n00b terms how to i ftp from my pc on subnet mask 00 to my xbox on subnet mask 128. The PC with flashfxp is 2.2 and my O/S is XP Home.

All help very much appreciated

user1234 helped me out with this....il just quote him in from an earlier post. you need to telnet to the wrt54g and login. you want to execute the command "echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth0/proxy_arp"
notice the bold around eth0...it could be eth1, eth2...you need to find out by first running the cmd "ifconfig" -- look for the eth# that is listed with an IP from your main router. that is the eth# you use in the proxy_arp command. once you do that, you should be able to ping, ftp to the xbox.

Originally posted by: user1234To find out the device name to use for proxy arp (e.g. eth0 or eth1 ir eth2, etc) telnet to the wrt54g and type the command "ifconfig". You should see a list of devices like "br0", "eth1", "vlan0" etc, and next to each one is some information. Look for the device which has an IP address that looks like 192.168.x.y where y is BELOW 128. There should only be one device with such an address. Now you just need to use this device name ito set up the proxy arp. For example, if the device is eth0, then use this command to set up proxy arp:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth0/proxy_arp

Now you can try to ping from the remote PC. btw, after you set up the proxy_arp (hopefully it will finally work), you can do port forwarding very easily by just setting it on the main router (designating the port to forward and the machine to forward it to). There is no need to set up the port forwarding on the client router, as the proxy arp will seamlessly forward anything that is addressed to a device attached to the client router.

btw, to telnet to your client router, just bring up a cmd prompt and telnet to its ip, user will be "root" and then the password you setup for it....default is admin.

 

[The Goon]

I luv this place,brilliant it worked,thank you Facemask i just ftp a skin over and it worked. Now thats done the next thing is to get KAI games network to go through. In the wireless setup it ask for the real mac addy and the virtual mac addy, the real one being the mac addy of the xbox and the virtual one being the wrt54g's which is written on the bottom of the router. I put them in and it's not detecting the xbox. Will i have to port foward this through the belkin? it says to use port 3000 tcp to port forward KAI,if this is the case what ip addy do i port foward to, the Belkin,WRT54G or the xbox ip addy?

 

[user1234]

Originally posted by: The Goon
I luv this place,brilliant it worked,thank you Facemask i just ftp a skin over and it worked. Now thats done the next thing is to get KAI games network to go through. In the wireless setup it ask for the real mac addy and the virtual mac addy, the real one being the mac addy of the xbox and the virtual one being the wrt54g's which is written on the bottom of the router. I put them in and it's not detecting the xbox. Will i have to port foward this through the belkin? it says to use port 3000 tcp to port forward KAI,if this is the case what ip addy do i port foward to, the Belkin,WRT54G or the xbox ip addy?

To forward a port, you just need to set it up on the MAIN ROUTER ONLY. You specify the port you want to forward (e.g. 3000 tcp) and the destination machine to forward to (e.g. the XBOX 192.168.2.140). Each router has a slightly different interface to setup the port forwarding, but they all usually involve specyfing the port to forward and the destination machine.

Not sure in what context you mention the real MAC and virtual MAC addresses ? in general, you should not need to be aware of the router's MAC address, so I would say that just put in your XBOX mac address for everything.

 

[user1234]

Originally posted by: facemask
awesome!! i actually checked that screen and missed it. once again...thanks a lot!

cool ! I think I need to update the proxy_arp step in the guide , as it seems that the WLAN device on the WRT54G could be any "ethX", and not always "eth1" like it is on my router.

newsflash: I udated step 10 of the guide to choose the correct interface when setting up the proxy_arp. So if anyone else had problems with this (especially people running a different version of the router or the firmware), you can retry step 10.

 

[The Goon]

Thanks user1234 but i tried your suggestions but no go. KAI and Xconnect use a system called "tunneling" basically the software is installed onto the pc, then it logs onto the net to find the games servers,you then put a system link game in the xbox go to system link and wait at the looking for games page,KAI and xconnect then see the xbox on the lan then the servers come up on the sytem link page and you join. I don't know if "tunneling" is possible with your setup, it does everything else,but fowarding ports isn't working. I disabled both the s/w and h/w firewalls but it still can't find the xbox.

Can this be done?? seems pretty dificult to me (as most things are lol) but in essence the pc is being used to "piggyback" the connetion to the internet from the xbox.

Thanks once again

 

[user1234]

Goon, the XBOX is not visible automatically on the lan from PCs attached to the main router. The only way to connect to the XBOX is by specifically using its IP address (e.g. 192.168.2.140). As for MAC address, from the point of view of the PC attached to the main router, the MAC address of the XBOX is actually the MAC address WRT54G wireless interface (it's not neccessarily the one printed on the bottom of the router, as the router has more than one MAC - one for each interface). To find out the WRT54G's wireless MAC address, type this command on the WRT54G:

ifconfig `route | grep default | awk '{print $NF}'`

The MAC address is shown in the first line.
As for port forwarding, I'm not sure if you intend to forward the port to the PC running the software, or to your XBOX. In any case, this should be simple to set up - you only need to do this on your main router. The proxy arp will take care of the rest. Good luck!!!

 

[user1234]

Originally posted by: pat68
Hi user1234.
Thanks for your advice. I already found the problem, on the WAG54G I had SSID broadcast disabled, enabled again and it works

great ! btw thanks, I added a note about this to the guide, just in case other people have a problem with this.

 

[facemask]

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/`route | grep default | awk '{print $NF}'`/proxy_arp

nice! :thumbsup:

 

[user1234]

Originally posted by: facemask
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/`route | grep default | awk '{print $NF}'`/proxy_arp

nice! :thumbsup:

thank you sir !

This uses the fact that the wireless interface device can be seen in the routing table as the one used to access the default gateway (which is the main router):

# route

I still think it's usually eth1 (because it worked for most people), except maybe in very recent or new versions of the WRT54G.

 

[thebestbutter]

I looked around, but couldn't get a solid answer for this question: Is it possible to use this on a version 3 of the WRT54G router? If so, would I have to do something special to make it work, or just follow the instructions normally? The thing is, I just bought a WRT54G from Amazon.com, and it could be a version 3 model. If anyone could help me out with this, it would be much appreciated. Thank you.

 

[user1234]

Originally posted by: ddmcdoodle
I looked around, but couldn't get a solid answer for this question: Is it possible to use this on a version 3 of the WRT54G router? If so, would I have to do something special to make it work, or just follow the instructions normally? The thing is, I just bought a WRT54G from Amazon.com, and it could be a version 3 model. If anyone could help me out with this, it would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Did you see this post a couple of pages back ?

Originally posted by: Tom33
Well to answer my own question.....Talisman Basic 1.0.3.1 Firmware will install on a V3 router. Router works as a router fine after the upgrade. I will head out tomorrow to pick up another router, to move the project further along.

 

[thebestbutter]

Yes, but the main reason I need the router for is to use it as a wireless bridge. Does the Talisman firmware do that?

 

[user1234]

I am not completely sure, as my router (also got it from amazon) is V2.2, but I believe you will be able to find at least some version of the sveasoft firmware which supports "client mode" (i.e. bridging) that is compatible with your router.

 

[thebestbutter]

Originally posted by: user1234
I am not completely sure, as my router (also got it from amazon) is V2.2, but I believe you will be able to find at least some version of the sveasoft firmware which supports "client mode" (i.e. bridging) that is compatible with your router.

Are there any free alternatives to the Sveasoft firmware? The Talisman firmware costs $20 to get, and of course I would like to spend the least amount possible on this. Basically all I need is a firmware for the version 3 of the router that supports client mode/bridging. Thanks.