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Forum Discussion
How to set up multiple WN604 on one network? Is this bridging?
Hello! I recently purchased 3 Netgear N150 WN604 wireless access points. I'm trying to create a strong wireless network throughout my house using one SSID. I'm having trouble getting this to work.
My setup (not including new wireless access points)... I have AT&T U-Verse for internet and the typical 2WIRE wireless network. This is 802.11b though, so far from ideal, and it doesn't reach the far side of my house. My entire house is wired with gigabit LAN (at least one jack in every room) all patched into a 16-port switch in the network closet (where the 2WIRE router lives). LAN works great.
Do I need bridging in this situation? The diagrams for bridging in the N150 manual show multiple LANs with only one of them having internet access. I really have only one LAN with internet access, so any N150 I plug into a port will have internet.
Here's what I tried first: All 3 N150s in my office for setup (plugged into an 8-port switch that's also plugged into the wall to connect to the house LAN)... I followed the instructions so that I could assign each a specific IP address within my network. They are assigned as follows:
192.168.1.197
192.168.1.198
192.168.1.199
All three correctly respond when pinged and the web interfaces work. Initially, my thought was I need bridging, and since I have 3 access points, I need 2 of them on point-to-point bridge mode and one of them as the wireless point-to-multi-point bridge. So... 192.168.1.197 and 192.168.1.199 are the point-to-point and 192.168.1.198 is the multi-point-to-point. The wireless mac address of 192.168.1.198 is in both the others profile setups. Each of the singles are in the multi-point ones setup. The instructions aren't particularly clear, but I interpreted that I'm supposed to use two of the profiles on the multi-point... NETGEAR-WDS-1 and NETGEAR-WDS-2, with each pointing to one of the single point-to-point access points.
Here's where it went wrong... as soon as I save 192.168.1.198 with the 2 multi-point profiles, my entire house network dies. All lights start flashing, as if it's overloading the network. Even my TV quits working (as it's on the LAN as well). If I turn off any of the access points, everything goes back to normal.
I'm not sure why that would happen. Maybe it's because I have them all in one room on one switch? My wife has stuff recording on the DVR constantly, so I can't just throw them around the house and hope they work while her crap stops recording... so I'm trying to see if this might be the root cause before doing that.
My current attempt is to see if I needed bridging at all... since all 3 access points have internet, I just set them all up as normal access points, all with the same SSID, on the same channel, and with the same security and password. I only see one SSID on my wireless devices, and it seems like it works usually, but is definitely problematic... in my office, it works like crap, even though one of the access points is sitting under my desk. In my living room, it's not too bad... but I think there's something going on here that isn't right. It should be strong all over the house if this setup were working. My guess is one of them is overriding the others.
Thoughts? What am I doing wrong? Any tips for this setup? Seems like I could get bridging to work fairly easily with just two... but adding the 3rd seems to be the problem. Not sure if I'm not setting it up correctly.
Thanks, Rocky
My setup (not including new wireless access points)... I have AT&T U-Verse for internet and the typical 2WIRE wireless network. This is 802.11b though, so far from ideal, and it doesn't reach the far side of my house. My entire house is wired with gigabit LAN (at least one jack in every room) all patched into a 16-port switch in the network closet (where the 2WIRE router lives). LAN works great.
Do I need bridging in this situation? The diagrams for bridging in the N150 manual show multiple LANs with only one of them having internet access. I really have only one LAN with internet access, so any N150 I plug into a port will have internet.
Here's what I tried first: All 3 N150s in my office for setup (plugged into an 8-port switch that's also plugged into the wall to connect to the house LAN)... I followed the instructions so that I could assign each a specific IP address within my network. They are assigned as follows:
192.168.1.197
192.168.1.198
192.168.1.199
All three correctly respond when pinged and the web interfaces work. Initially, my thought was I need bridging, and since I have 3 access points, I need 2 of them on point-to-point bridge mode and one of them as the wireless point-to-multi-point bridge. So... 192.168.1.197 and 192.168.1.199 are the point-to-point and 192.168.1.198 is the multi-point-to-point. The wireless mac address of 192.168.1.198 is in both the others profile setups. Each of the singles are in the multi-point ones setup. The instructions aren't particularly clear, but I interpreted that I'm supposed to use two of the profiles on the multi-point... NETGEAR-WDS-1 and NETGEAR-WDS-2, with each pointing to one of the single point-to-point access points.
Here's where it went wrong... as soon as I save 192.168.1.198 with the 2 multi-point profiles, my entire house network dies. All lights start flashing, as if it's overloading the network. Even my TV quits working (as it's on the LAN as well). If I turn off any of the access points, everything goes back to normal.
I'm not sure why that would happen. Maybe it's because I have them all in one room on one switch? My wife has stuff recording on the DVR constantly, so I can't just throw them around the house and hope they work while her crap stops recording... so I'm trying to see if this might be the root cause before doing that.
My current attempt is to see if I needed bridging at all... since all 3 access points have internet, I just set them all up as normal access points, all with the same SSID, on the same channel, and with the same security and password. I only see one SSID on my wireless devices, and it seems like it works usually, but is definitely problematic... in my office, it works like crap, even though one of the access points is sitting under my desk. In my living room, it's not too bad... but I think there's something going on here that isn't right. It should be strong all over the house if this setup were working. My guess is one of them is overriding the others.
Thoughts? What am I doing wrong? Any tips for this setup? Seems like I could get bridging to work fairly easily with just two... but adding the 3rd seems to be the problem. Not sure if I'm not setting it up correctly.
Thanks, Rocky
2 Replies
- Picture this ... You have a river and on each bank, there is a road network, but they are not directly connected to one another so no traffic can flow - if you need to connect the two networks you build a bridge to link the road networks. Now - let's translate that into two wired networks - with no direct connection between the two, so no data flows - you can connect an access point to each of those wired networks, and build a wireless bridge to link the wired networks. Understand the concept of bridging now? If you configure as bridges and wire back to the same network as you seem to be doing, you will create a network loop which will bring the network down. What you need to do is configure your access points as a normal access point, and set each to a different channel - 1/6/11 (if you use the same channel, they will interfere with one another, and 1, 6 & 11 are the only "non-overlapping" channels) - same SSID, same encryption keys - and wire each access point back to the main network.
- Great explanation... I did what you said (moved them to 1, 6, and 11) and turned off bridging. So far, everything seems to be working well.
Thanks!
