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The Goal: Connect an existing wireless LAN to an existing wireless WAN without an ethernet drop.
In the past when I had this portable wireless subnet setup, I had an ethernet drop I could plug into my router thereby serving its original purpose as a router.
In the current configuration, I have no ethernet drop but only access to the wireless WAN. (Before you suggest it, it is not desired to configure each of the devices in the subnet to use the wireless credentials.)
This gives you an idea what I'm trying to do:
Here are the ingredients:
- several wireless devices configured with the credentials for the wireless LAN served by my router (192.168.0.1/24)
- Router A: A wireless router that connects those devices in their little subnet
- Router B: A wireless router that connects to router A via ethernet and to the WAN wirelessly flashed with DD-WRT
- Access to the wireless WAN
Router A is already doing its job and works perfectly when plugged into ethernet.
The question is, how should Router B be configured? It has to connect to the WAN, but also has to pass everything via ethernet to Router A. Ideally, Router B would act just like a wired ethernet drop from the point of view of Router A.
I tried DD-WRT Client Bridged tutorial and DD-WRT Repeater Bridge tuorial, but neither seemed to be exactly what I'm looking for. But perhaps I just didn't know how to adapt the configuration.
Does this configuration have a name? Do you have any suggestions or specific instructions?
EDIT: Yes, it has a name. I was looking to configure Router B in a "client bridge" configuration. See answer below.
And if you are curious, this is for this project.
1tbh, for something like this I'd just grab a repeater with an ethernet port and be done with it. Its about 20 dollars or so and pretty painless. – Journeyman Geek – 2017-04-03T04:01:16.317
@JourneymanGeek, is this the same as a WiFi extender? Would the repeater pass through DHCP to the device plugged into its ethernet? – Wes Modes – 2017-04-03T20:03:01.593
WDS would be my first choice if both routers support it. Failing that, you could set up a tunnel between the two routers and bridge that tunnel to B's wireless clients. (It won't work the easy, obvious way because A will only put packets on the air if they're address to one of its clients, which they won't be.) – David Schwartz – 2017-04-03T21:46:07.397
In the past, I've plugged Router A into an ethernet drop and its clients were able to access email. Is there not some config of Router B that allows me to plug it into Router A via ethernet and router A would become a client of the main wireless router (much as it does when it is plugged in)? – Wes Modes – 2017-04-03T21:51:11.523
So far the closest thing I've found is this http://stackoverflow.com/a/14905806/2386836
– Wes Modes – 2017-04-04T01:14:42.330