View source for Creating a wireless bridge using WDS

=or How to connect a Telenet Digicorder using Wi-Fi=
[http://telenet.be Telenet] Digicorders cannot be connected via Wi-Fi. Officially you either should use an ftp cable to connect it to the Telenet modem (other switches in between are fine) or you have to use Powerline adapters. Telenet and their technicians will tell you connecting the modem using Wi-Fi doesn't work. I assumed that using two devices, one as an AP and another as a client could create a layer 2 bridge which would allow the Digicorder to be connected to the modem just as it would've been using the network cable.

==Test 1: Sitecom wlx-2001==
I got a Sitecom WLX-2001 to act as a wireless bridge/repeater and plugged everything in. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Tcpdump to the rescue revealed that the repeater was replacing the MAC address of the Digicorder with a virtual one. Looking further into it, it seems like this is the normal way these things work.

==Test 2: Linksys WRT54GL==
Next step was trying using a WRT54GL running Openwrt, configured in client mode bridged to the netwerk ports. Unfortunately, this had the same behaviour as the previous repeater and a virtual MAC was seen again. Just to make sure, I've tried cloning the MAC address of the Digicorder to the wireless card of the WRT54GL, but this also didn't work (it also doesn't make sense as the built-in switch would see the same MAC address on 2 interfaces).

Reading further into things, there's a WET mode that can be specified for wireless cards that should do what I need. WET (Wireless Ethernet Transceiver) does provide a nice transparent bridge, forwarding the MAC addresses of the devices to the AP. Unfortunately I failed to get it working using the WRT54GL and OpenWRT.

==Test 3: WDS==
As there was only limited configurability on the AP, which was a Linksys WRT160N, I decided to flash both devices to dd-wrt for my next experiment. On both devices following settings were changed:
* Disable WAN interface
* Disable DHCP
* Configured with fixed IP
* AP mode enabled with identical SSID
* Same password (WPA2 mixed mode)
* Enable STP

Then WDS (Wireless Distribution System) was configured. In the WDS tab, select LAN and enter the other AP's MAC address (as it's own MAC address is shown at the top, you can easily find it if you put the configuration page of each AP next to each other). After applying all settings, give the AP's some time to settle the STP. Finally, it was working: the Digicorders packets were nicely forwarded to the Telenet modem via Wi-Fi without any alteration.