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There's a small network that's in 1 building that we want to extend to another building about 75 feet away but running an Ethernet cable is not easily doable. I'd like to extend the network wirelessly but I don't recall ever going from a wired, to a wireless, then back to a wired network as in the image. I need to know what Black box A and Black box B would be if this is even possible. Is there such a thing?

Thanks, alt text

Jeff
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Sure, you can do this. In fact, it's fairly common. There's nothing magical about wireless as a physical network layer.

Normally, it's done with more expensive dedicated wireless networking gear. I don't think consumer wireless router/gateway devices generally have this as an advertised feature, but if you can replace the firmware, you can do this with either DD-WRT or OpenWRT:

mattdm
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    Are you kidding me? It's all magical. – Jeff Dec 07 '10 at 19:50
  • Ha! But yeah, the great thing about a layered network model is that the physical layer actually *could* be magic (or trained pigeons, or whatever), and the stuff on top just works, without any modification. – mattdm Dec 07 '10 at 19:52
  • I think @mattdm is referring to RFC 1149 - Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html) – JonathanMueller Dec 07 '10 at 19:58
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Yes, you are looking for wireless bridging. There are many devices that can do this.

CarloBaldini
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