WDS

This weekend we set up our new TV, and while we were doing this we decided to get rid of the tower that contained most of our AV equipment.  I use to keep  our Apple AirPort Extreme on top of the tower, and used it to extend the range of our wireless network.  It had been connected to the wired network.

It was necessary for me to find a different place for the base station, that is out of reach of the kids hands.  The only other place is on top of armoire, but there isn't a network drop there.  I decided to set it up using WDS.  It was a little tricky, as the main base station is a Linksys WRT54GS.




Here are the steps that I used to set this up:

1. Disable WPA on both base stations


2. Change the SSID on the Apple Airport Extreme to be unique.


3. In the WDS tab of the Linksys add the MAC for the Airport Extreme, and change the setting to "Lan"


4. On the Airport Extreme, go to the WDS tab and enable the base station as a "remote base station"


5. Then check "Allow wireless clients on this base station"


6. Enter the Linksys MAC into the "Main AirPort ID" text box


7. Make sure that the channel is the same between the two base stations

I am not able to enable WPA, when I do, the WDS stops working.  Also it is unfortunate that the channels have to be set to the same value.  I would assume that this could cause interference.

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