LBH Sound System offers free wireless to everyone in our Listening Room. I recently installed a Wireless Distribution System (WDS) to extend the range of our wifi and to allow for remote management of our Behringer X32 Rack. The set-up is the simplest WDS possible and uses a single base station and a single repeater. Both devices are Netgear WNR1000v4 routers. The manual instructions were OK but I figured I would add a few words of my own.
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You need to identify and write down the following pieces of information.
Base Station MAC address
The base station is the router that has internet access.
WiFi SSID
The is the name of the wifi network.
Base Station IP
This is the IP address seen by the WiFi SSID network. This is often set to
192.168.1.5
Repeater MAC address
This is the router that will forward/repeat internet access FROM the base station.
Repeater IP
This must be on the same subnet as the base station and, using the example above, could be set to
192.168.1.6
Please follow these steps in order. Just like baking, it actually matters what order you do things. Make sure to apply your changes after each step.
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Setting up the initial base station
1) Log into your base station.
2) Change the admin password.
3) Change the wifi SSID (eg: LBH Free WiFi).
4) [Optional] Create a password for the wifi SSID. The security option must be WEP (or no security).
5) Select a channel for the wifi SSID (eg: 7).
6) Enable Wireless Repeating Function (ADVANCED > Advanced Setup > Wireless Repeating Function).
7) Select the Wireless Repeater radio button.
8) In the Wireless Base Station / Repeater MAC Address 1 field, enter the MAC addresses for the first repeater. (A base stations can connect up to four repeaters. Each repeater must have its own unique IP address.)
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Setting up the repeater
1) Log into your repeater.
2) Change the admin password.
3) Change the wifi SSID to the base station SSID. The name must be the exact same – case sensitive!
4) [Optional] If you set up a password for the base station SSID, then you must use the same one for all repeaters.
5) Select the same channel for the wifi SSID as the base station channel.
6) Enable Wireless Repeating Function (ADVANCED > Advanced Setup > Wireless Repeating Function).
7) Select the Wireless Repeater radio button.
8) Complete the Repeater IP Address field.This IP address must be in the same subnet as the base station, but different from the LAN IP address of the base station (eg: 192.168.1.5). This is the permanent IP address for the new repeater that you are setting up.
9) In the Base Station MAC Address field, enter the base station MAC addresses.
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Note 1: The major difference between the base station and the repeater setups are these:
Base Station
Select “Wireless Base Station” option
Enter the IP address of the repeater
Repeater
Select “Wireless Repeater” option
Enter the IP address of the repeater (it must be one entered above for the base station).
Enter the “Base Station MAC Address”
Note 2: You can hard wire an additional base station to any access point and extend the network even further. The new base station must be wired via ethernet to the repeater as a repeater can not act as both a repeater and a base station. Alternatively, if you hard wire a new base station to a repeater, you can create a completely new wireless network from that new base station – there is no requirement to continue to push the original SSID out.
Note 3: Each extension is called a “hop”. Networks using 3 hops are common. I have never found one that works consistently using more than 6 hops.
Final Note: The key to all of this is to set up the base station first and then to mirror the EXACT SAME information into all repeaters. Spaces in names matter. Case matters. Entering the correct MAC address matters.
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Do the first thing first (base station set-up) and the second thing second (repeater set-up).
If anything fails, just reset the router you are working on and start over. Make sure the base station is working correctly before you start on the repeaters. Following these instructions should take no more than 10 minutes to set up any single router.
Good luck.
