Created By Tee

Expand your wireless network wirelessly

July 3rd, 2005

How to expand wireless network using bridges and routers with mac filtering

NOTE: MOST WIRELESS ROUTERS WON’T TALK TO EACH OTHER WIRELESSLY. (MOST ROUTERS MEANS ONE THAT DOESN’T SUPPORT WDC.)

Though this guide is very device-specific(mr814v2 and ME101) but the procedure I gave below should give you general concept of how to do it.

I have two netgear MR814V2s(routers) and a netgear ME101(wireless bridge). I bought this ME101 to get two routers to talk to each other wirelessly. First time I try to set up these things up. I got frusturated, although I followed exactly on what the manual said. So, I figured out that the manual(the one that came with the bridge and the one online) is totally useless. So, I decided to just forget about the manual and figure how it works on my own.
So, I found that

1) to get this bridge talk to the router(wirelessly) for the first time you need to turn off mac filtering the router first

2) If you want to turn the mac filtering on, every machine behind the bridge is considered as if it’s connected to the router via wireless card. (wireless)Mac address of your machine is the mac address of ethernet adapter that machine is using. I know what I wrote is a little bit confusing here. Basically, what I meant was that you NEED to add the ethernet adaptor’s mac address of every machine and devices behind the bridge to alllowed mac address list of the router.

If the above is not clear enough, here is example
here is the setup

A_r(router A with mac filter on)…….wi-fi……..B_b(ME-101)–cross over cable–>C_r(another router)……wi-fi……your machine(M_1,M_2,…M_n)

This setup procedure serves as a beginner guide. If you know what you are doing then you can adapt this thing to suit your network need.

1) turn the mac filtering(WEP too) of A_r off

2)add B_b’s mac address and C_r’s mac address and M_1,M_2,…,M_n’s mac address to allowed mac list of A_r and M_1….M_n to allowed list of C_r–> THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT and is not noted in the manual

3)get one computer(N_1) to connect to B_b via cross over cable.

4) IP address of the computer (N_1)–> set it to Manual IP 192.168.0.xxx subnet mask 255.255.255.0 be sure that this xxx won’t conflict(is the same as) with the ip of ME-101(192.168.0.200 by default) and other machines in the network

5) type the ip address of the bridge in the address bar(192.168.0.200 by default)

6) In wireless setting get it to connect with the router A_r click the right SSID and right mac address of the router (ie the ones of A_r)

7) now after you get this bridge to talk with the A_r. Test by pinging the router A_r try ping 192.168.0.1 (change 192.168.0.1 to ip address of A_r) in most case it is 192.168.0.1

8) after pinging success, unplug the cable from N_1 and connect ME-101 and C_r. Turn on mac filtering of A_r and C_r. Turn on DHCP on ONLY A_r. Don’t turn on DHCP on on more than one device. Make sure SSID of A_r and C_r are the same. Now, you are done… enjoy

Entry Filed under: Wireless tip