I'm having some trouble setting up two bridges and any suggestions or help would be appreciated. What I'd like to do is use two WAG102's as both AP and bridge. One unit is wired to my router with the "G" channel as the AP, access control, WPA-PSK/TKIP and no bridging. The "A" channel is configured as the bridge. My problem is that while the AP is working fine on "G", I can't get any connection at all on "A". Neither unit even sees the other.
Here's my config => unit 1: wired to router (192.168.77.250) static IP: 192.168.77.251/24, gateway and DNS: 192.168.77.250 wireless G: channel 1, best data rate, full output power "G" security: broadcast SSID, WPA-PSK/TKIP, no client separation "G" access control enabled and working for configured clients "G" advanced settings: Super G enabled, all others default, bridging disabled wireless A: A only, channel 157, best data rate, full output power "A" security: broadcast SSID, open system, no encryption, no client separation "A" access control off "A" advanced settings: Super-A enabled, all others default "A" access point settings: enabled as point-to-point bridge, remote MAC set to unit2's WLAN MAC (I've tried both wired and wireless MAC's)
unit 2: wired to laptop for config static IP: 192.168.77.252/24, gateway and DNS: 192.168.77.250 wireless G: radio off "G" security: disabled "G" access control disabled "G" advanced settings: all default, bridging disabled wireless A: A only, channel 157, best data rate, full output power "A" security: broadcast SSID, open system, no encryption, no client separation "A" access control off "A" advanced settings: Super-A enabled, all others default "A" access point settings: enabled as point-to-point bridge, remote MAC set to unit1's WLAN MAC (I've tried both wired and wireless MAC's)
These are both new units with 2.0.7NA firmware. Physical separation is only 10 feet in the same room. Once I get this working, the actual setup will be about 20 feet separation with a closet and one wall between.
I don't think you can do what you're trying to - which is essentially a repeater setup, but with the "A" radios being used for the backhaul.
Try this - disable both "G" radios and connect a wired client to the second access point - you should be able to get this functional as a wireless bridge using just the "A" radios, once that is up, re-enable the "G" radios, it will either stay up, or it won't.
If it stays up you're good to go - if it doesn't then you know it's not going to work.
One last thing - the final locations are going to be only 20' apart? That is no distance at all - whatever you're connecting to the second access point should be able to associate with the first one, and if it can't because of the construction of the intervening wall & closet, then I seriously doubt that you'll be able to maintain a connection at 5GHz.
So far, no help, though. I tried turning off the "G" radios and the "A" side still won't connect. I also tried swapping the two units and both work fine as "G" AP's.
OK, I've now got this working fine even though Netgear Support hasn't responded,yet. The missing step was checking all available channels. As a last step before returning both units, I began trying all of the "A" channels by starting at the bottom and working up.
When I got to channel 44 I noticed the activity log on the unit acting as both "G" AP and one side of the "A" bridge showed that it had connected to the other unit. This is despite the fact that the page that should show "available wireless stations" shows nothing.
Anyway, I now have it working with one unit running in "A" mode only ("G" radio turned off) as the bridge between two segments on my LAN. The other unit is working fine as my "G" AP and my laptops connect just fine.
I have successfully gotten two WAG102's bridged via their "a" channels and both offering WiFi via their "g" channels. I was able to get it to work with "a" channel 36 and the 5GHz signal penetration seems better than the 2.4 GHz "g" penetration, although I didn't test that thoroughly. It took me a while to get it all to work, but that's just because I wasn't being meticulous enough.
I could not get the WAG102 units to cooperate with my Verizon Actiontec MI424-WR Rev. F unit’s WAP functionality very well: the throughput was quartered and latency doubled when I tried to set up the WAG102’s with the same SSID and security settings as the Actiontec. So I used a different SSID and once I have everyone transferred to the new SSID, I’ll disable the Verizon unit’s WAP functionality and just use it as a modem + router. I decided to move to a new SSID because A) I wanted to change from WEP to WPA2 (Windows makes it a bit of a pain for non-techies to deal with such a change for a given SSID), and B) I wanted to make it easy to revert to the old setup in the event that the WAG102 units fail.
