A few weeks ago I moved into a house with some fellow 2XL’ers. We’re all varying degrees of nerdcore, and as soon as we got our cable internet activated the first order of business became the setup of a house-wide network. None of us wanted to run new wiring, but we all have several devices that require (read: we’re too cheap to buy a bunch of new wi-fi cards) wired network connections. Wi-fi is a great option if you’ve already got the hardware, but we didn’t have nearly as many wi-fi access cards as we had devices. We were aiming to complete this setup with as little extra hardware as possible, so direct-to-device wi-fi was tossed from the list of possible solutions.

We had two Linksys WRT54-G routers and a Motorola cable modem. We were attempting to connect 10 devices in three different rooms on two separate floors to our network. However would this magical feat be accomplished with no new wiring and minimal extra hardware?

My former school-mate Tony had posted a while back about a new firmware called Tomato that runs on Linksys WRT54-G routers. This wonderful little piece of software enables a standard Linksys box to do all sorts of great stuff like real-time bandwidth monitoring, QOS, and, most importantly to me, WDS. WDS? Another meaningless techronym? Not exactly.

WDS, or Wireless Distribution System, allows wi-fi access points to be interconnected wirelessly. If you’re familiar with the WRT54-G, you’ll know that this is not fully supported using the default Linksys firmware (depending on your hardware version).

With WDS, you could theoretically connect (via hardwire) a router (router1) to your cable modem and have the router act as the main access point. Then, in a different room, you could have another router (router2) wirelessly connect and essentially extend the range of router1. Thus, in room2, connecting a device to the internet is as simple as hooking it up to router2. Router1 serves as the DHCP server, feeding IP addresses to all devices that request them, regardless of their placement. Wired or wireless via router1, wired or wireless via router2. It makes no difference to your network devices.

But, as all good stories go, there had to be a problem in the middle. Our problem came in the form of the varying firmware versions of our two WRT54-G routers. Mine was old-school, v1.0. The other was v6.0. Unfortunately for us, the Tomato firmware is only compatible with v1.0-v4.0 routers. An alternative had to be out there somewhere.

Enter DD-WRT.

DD-WRT is yet another firmware alternative for the Linksys WRT-54G, and it currently supports v1.0 all the way up to v8.0. DD-WRT, as I would find out, does a whole bunch of fancy tricks like allowing you to overclock, change the radio output power, and use WDS! So, after just a few minutes of reflashing, the Linksys v6.0 was up and running WDS with DD-WRT.

That covers room1 and room2. What were we going to do for room3? A bit of reading on the DD-WRT site and I found that the Buffalo WHR-G125 is the best bang for the buck. Plus, there’s currently only one firmware version of the WHR-G125, so you can be sure that when you buy one in the store, it will be DD-WRT-compatible. A quick run to the electronics store and for about $40 we were on our way.

Router3, the WHR-G125 was fairly simple to flash and setup with DD-WRT. For room3, router3 would request IP addresses from its WDS partner, router2. Router2 then forwards the DHCP requests to router1 and relays the response back. Again, network devices in room3 don’t care what is going on. They know they connect to router3, ask for IP addresses, and auto-configure just as good IP devices should. Wired or wireless, it makes no difference.

So the network is now complete. All three rooms have available wired access for those pesky devices with cost-prohibitive wi-fi adapters (cough, Xbox 360!) and wireless access for those devices that are wi-fi capable (e.g. laptops). An added bonus for the laptop users in the house is the adaptive connection nature of WDS. Wherever you are connected to wi-fi inside (or outside) of the house, you will always be directed to the hotspot that gives you the best signal. Thus, you can bounce around from the downstairs living room to the kitchen, upstairs, or even out to the garage (for the digital handi-men of the household) and still have uninterrupted wi-fi access.

Once again I have found that a little bit of research on the internet can help breathe new life into older devices. My recommendation? Go with the Buffalo WHR-G125. It is cheap and has a fairly easy install process for DD-WRT. Then read about WDS setup over at Tomato’s WDS setup tutorial (doesn’t matter what firmware you use, WDS is pretty much the same everywhere). You’ll be up and running with a (relatively) secure, reliable, convenient, rental-friendly network in just a few hours.

UPDATE 2007-08-15:

When I said in my previous post that we “were attempting to connect 10 devices in three different rooms on two separate floors,” I was underestimating.

Turns out I was short by one room. After digging through my electronics bin, I found my old Linksys BEFW11S4, a 4-port wireless B router that hasn’t been used in years. Unfortunately, this little guy is not capable of running cool aftermarket firmware like Tomato or DD-WRT. But, since the fourth room was so close to the main house router, all I had to do was run a short wired connection over to the fourth room. So, for a grand total of about $40 spent beyond all the hardware we originally owned before joining forces in the 2XL house, we have a completed network.

Thirteen devices. Four rooms. Two floors. Nerdcore 4-ever.

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