AirPort Express extending Linksys WRT54G
At home I am using a Linksys WRT54G router to give me
wireless connectivity. But the house is quite big and it’s really not like I have wirless everywhere. So I thought of getting a bridge to extend the range. As I was blogging before
you can increase the transmit power of the router …but that did not really do the trick for me – especially since I do not want to fry my access point. The recommendet max
power was just not good enough.
After some investigations I found that it is -despite what apple says- possible to use that tiny little white airport express device to extend other non-airport networks. So all you
really need is WDS support. Antonio pointed me to the excellent Sveasoft firmware for the Linksys.I had some problems getting my PPPoE working for T-Online but once that was working tried to connect my Airport
Express.
First thing you need to do is to configure the Linksys. You will need the MAC address of your Express. Attention: you need to pick the right one! Of course it has two. A lot of people
have spent a lot of time fiddling around with the wrong one.
The WAN address is written on the bottom of the Express. The wireless MAC is meant to be off by one. I found it safer to just connect to
the Express and “ping” the gateway and then get the MAC from the arp table (”arp -a”). In the end using the Airport
Utility seems to be the best choice. Just connect to the Airport Express network. You want the “Airport ID”. Ok, back to the Linksys. Under the WDS tab you now need to
register the Express as a LAN extention. Use the “Airport ID”. Also make sure the “WDS subnet” is disabled. Having “Laszy WDS” disabled works for me.
Although with the new Firmware you also can choose WPA you have to use 128Bit WEP. After those settings are active you are ready to go with the Airport Express configuration.
Don’t spend any time mocking around with the
Airport Express Wizard – it just won’t work. Again use the Airport Admin Utility. On the “Airport” tab select the name you want. Actually it can be same like the
network you are extending. I’ve chosen a different one because I want to be able to explicitly choose. Also because the Airport speakers are only available on that very access
point. Make sure you select the same channel your Linksys is running on. Select “Create a Wireless Network” as wireless mode – not the client mode. On the
“Internet” tab tell your Express to connect to the Linksys via WDS. Let him get a DHCP address from the WDS host and enable wireless clients.
On the “Network” tab deactivate the DHCP server. On the “WDS” tab you define the WDS host and tell the Express to act as “remote base station”.
Well …so that should be it. Configure your Airport Express and after a while you should get a green light.