XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-10, comp.mobile.android
From: spam@nospam.com
Andy Burns wrote:
>> Does having one router joining a wireless client bridge on the home router
>> disable that home router access point from being a normal access point?
>
> I've never used bridge mode, but always assumed that the SSID you set up for
> bridging, should only have the 'partner' bridge device for point-to-point,
not
> any client devices.
>
> [or multiple bridge partners, if your device supports point-to-multipoint?]
Thanks Andy for trying to help out as only one in thousands on Usenet are
purposefully helpful people who spend the time to try to help the others.
I think I may have figured it out after running a few hours of tests today.
(Networking always confuses me because I have no book learning on the topic;
all my networking is empirical tests such as those I ran today shown below.)
dd-wrt client bridge
dd-wrt bridge repeater
run site survey & join
both SSIDs now work!
Thanks Andy for your always helpful advice. Last night I spent hours trying
to figure this out, and I still haven't figured it out, but I think the home
Netgear N router simply has a "bad" 2.4GHz as strange as that sounds.
But I'm not sure yet... as I spent a few hours this morning running tests.
To your point of bridge mode SSID's, I am no good at networking so I only
know what works when I experiment. When I connect the PC Ethernet port by
Cat5 to to the dd-wrt (WRT54G) router, mainly I perform three dd-wrt setup
steps to connect the dd-wrt wirelessly to the home router SSID, namely:
1. I set the dd-wrt to "wireless client bridge" mode
2. I run a dd-wrt "site survey" and "join" the 2.4GHz home router SSID
3. I duplicate the 2.4Ghz home router SSID's authentication stuff
That bridges PC Ethernet via the dd-wrt router to the home router 2.4GHz SSID,
but it wouldn't allow my phone to connect to the same access point.
But then I ran a _different_ test and got completely different results!
What I did was bridge to a _different_ 2.4GHz SSID in my home
(I have plenty as can be seen by this photo - so I just added a 2.4GHz Rocket).
Then I tried to connect my phone to _that_ (already bridged) access point.
It worked!
It even worked when I slightly modified the dd-wrt to change the
"Wireless Client Bridge" mode to a wireless "Bridge Repeater",
which simply adds the ability for devices to connect to that same bridge,
wirelessly, in addition to the PC connected to that bridge via its RJ45
Ethernet port & CAT5 cable.
Hmmm....
That makes no sense...
What I've tentatively concluded, for now, is that there's something 'wrong'
with my 2.4GHz access point inside the Netgear N router.
Here's what is working at the moment (and what I'm using to send this):
a. The upstairs PC RJ45 is wired to one of the four dd-wrt LAN ports
b. A Rocket M2 is wired to one of the downstairs Netgear router LAN ports
c. The upstairs dd-wrt is set to "wireless bridge repeater" mode
d. The upstairs dd-wrt ran a "site survey" & "joined" the Rocket M2 SSID
e. And I typed the duplicate SSID credentials into the upstairs dd-wrt
That does three things which didn't happen with the Netgear 2.4GHz SSID.
1. The upstairs PC gets its Internet over that Rocket M2 client bridge
2. The phone can now also connect wireelessly to that same Rocket M2 SSID
3. In addition, the upstairs dd-wrt makes its own SSID available to Wi-Fi
This means that everything works as you'd want it to work, which is that
even though the downstairs Rocket M2 access point is connected to the
upstairs dd-wrt as a client bridge, the phone can also connect to that
Rocket M2 SSID at the same time.
Meanwhile, upstairs I have a new access point that I never had before,
which is that the dd-wrt set up in "wireless bridge repeater" mode,
additionally, as a bonus, acts as a Wi-Fi access point for the phone.
That most of this failed with the Netgear 2.4GHz router, I think means
that there's just "something wrong" with that 2.4GHz radio.
BTW, it was hugely useful to set my Android 12 "Developer options" to
"Enable Wi-Fi Verbose Logging" because I would never have seen the
error message of "NETWORK_SELECTION_DISABLED_AUTHENTICATION_FAILURE=2"
otherwise.
The #2 seems to be simply an incremental counter of how many times
the phone tries to reconnect and gets the same error, so we can ignore that.
A search shows it's a common error message found on Android phones.
It seems, like many networking issues, there are multiple error causes.
While there are many such errors, most people never figure it out,
but this one suggestion made me think of a workaround - which - surprisingly
worked!
*How to Fix WiFi Authentication Error Occurred on Android*
Following that suggestion that it's simply an error in the SSID or password
or encryption setup, I removed the password and encryption from the
downstairs Netgear 2.4GHz access point.
Wouldn't you know it, everything worked after I did that!
Huh? Makes no sense (I've checked the configuration many many times!)
My experimental results this morning show that without any encryption,
I _can_ connect the upstairs dd-wrt wireless client bridge/repeater to
the downstairs 2.4GHz access point and I can connect a phone also to it.
But the instant I add security, I can't.
It's crazy.
That makes no sense.
Anyway, I think the answer to the original question is this:
Q: Can you wirelessly bridge to a router AP & still use that router AP
for other wireless devices to connect wirelessly to that bridged AP?
A: Yes.
In fact, not only can you bridge to that downstairs router's AP and
still use that downstairs router's AP for other devices to connect
wirelessly to (such as a phone), but the upstairs dd-wrt bridge itself
can act as yet _another_ access point for wireless devices to connect to.
It's the best of all worlds when it works.
a. You convert a PC with only Ethernet, to a powerful Wi-Fi connection
b. At the same time, you can use the Netgear router AP for other devices
c. And, at the same time, you add a new AP to the dd-wrt for other devices
It's perfect!
(when it works)
--
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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