Wifi Network Experts Needed For Explanation On Terminology And Advice.

[tangcoral]

I will be staying at quite a few hotels in chiangmai next month. I find that some of the hotels have weak wifi signals.

Is there a way to connect my router to the hotel's access points wirelessly. I would assume a lot of these hotels do not have internet lan ports so wireless would be the only option.

Easy way would be get a wifi antenna extender of some sort but I would like to connect multiple devices like my wife's laptop and ipad along with my laptop.

I have a wrt54gl router with dd-wrt installed.

From my readings, I see there is Client mode, client bridge, wireless bridge, client bridge. and wireless client?

Whats the difference between all these?

[Meisgq]

You want to connect your router to their access points in order to extend the signal? If the wifi signal is weak to begin with, the bottleneck will still be at your router.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Meisgq

[flash77]

I haven't used dd-wrt and the different ways of using your router does seem confusing. I just read http://www.dd-wrt.co...ex.php/Bridging and a few other pages and here is my understanding. Your network looks like:

Internet --- HotelWirelessRouter --- YourRouter --- YourLaptop

With your router in "Client Bridge" mode, it forms a wireless link to the hotel wireless router. And then your laptop connects via a WIRED link to your router. As far as I can understand, you cannot connect your laptop wirelessly to your router.

With your router in "Repeater" mode, it forms a wireless link to the hotel wireless router. Your laptop can connect wirelessly (or wired) to your router, which then forwards the data to the hotel router. (Your laptop can also connect wirelessly direct to the hotel router if close enough). This is intended for extending the range. The disadvantage of this approach is it about halves the wireless performance.

With your router in "Client" Mode, its similar to Client Bridge but your router is a true router, creating another subnet. The potential problem with this is that your router must handle DHCP (assigning IP addresses) and port forwarding, whereas in Client Bridge its only the hotel router that handles this.

I think "Wireless Bridge" mode is the old name for "Client Bridge".

So in your case if you want a wireless link from laptop/tablet to your router, use "Repeater" mode. If you are ok with a wired link from laptop to your router use "Client Bridge" mode.

Again, I've never used dd-wrt, so maybe someone who's done this can advise further.

[tangcoral]

flash77, thank you so much for clarifying alot of things. This has at least cleared up half my confusion.

meisgq: yes you are correct but I would imagine my linksys router should be much better at picking up the signal than the laptop. Plus I have a high gain antenna on it.

Edited August 24, 2012 by tangcoral

[CP3]

Also one good point is u'r using dd-wrt , you can change the tx/rx power from the gui.

[monty]

I have done ecactly that with dd-wrt, but it was a pain to get it to work.

Found a tutorial to walk me trough, and it involved setting the ap names and some weird firewall rules/setings to be changed...

Also the wireless encryption on both sides had to be the same, i.e if the main wifi source was wep, on your side (dd-wrt) it had to ne wep as well.

Will see if i can find the tutorial when home. Worked a charm though, with 2 high gain omni's on the linksys...

Sent from my GT-I9001 using Thaivisa Connect App

[trimesh]

I've got a TP-Link WL-MR3020 for exactly this situation - it's small (about 7x7x3 cm), light, and will either operate from USB power or from a wall socket using the supplied power adapter. It's also got 3 operating modes: 3G (uses a USB aircard), WISP (WiFi to WiFi bridge) and AP (Access point only) - so if you are traveling you can set it up to work in places with a hard-wired connection (AP mode), Wireless connection (WISP mode) and no internet access at all (3G mode).

One annoying "feature" is that when you are in WISP mode the AP only comes up after it connects to the host network - so if you set it up and take it to another hotel where the network has a different SSID you have to connect to it using a (supplied) RJ45 cable to reconfigure it - which can be a serious problem if, like one of my friends, you have a Macbook Air with no network port...

[ITGabs]

I use that configuration in Umongthong close to wat umong btw are nice rooms 1000 1500 per day 8500 9500 per room the cheap one http://umongthong.com/

l have the same router let me find the "how to" that i used

[ITGabs]

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge follow the instructions of that page, you must upgrade you dd wrt since it's old

as flash77 says, repeater bridge is the unique that allow you to connect by wifi to your router, you not need more antenas, but you need to find a place to put your router high better in a window, you must think that the wifi waves are bouncing on walls and all the objects around, with very few % of penetration in objects.

[Dork]

Using a DD-WRT flashed router in repeater mode will help with the problem of weak wifi signal mainly because as already suggested you can often locate the device in a part of the room where the signal is strongest.

However, because many hotels require you to login via a web browser with username & password, the above solution won't help to share internet access among multiple devices because you can only login with one device at a time and sometimes only one device for the duration of your account (by regsitering your MAC address).

To solve this problem I use one of these:

http://www.invadeit.co.th/product/wireless-networking/asus/6-in-1-wireless-n-mobile-router-worlds-smallest-multi-role-device-with-3g-wl-330n3g-p006973/

It is a tiny travel router which along with all the normal wifi functions can also operate in "hotspot mode" allowing you to login to the hotels gateway and then share that wifi account with as many devices as you like. You can place or hang the unit from anywhere where there is an AC or USB power source.

Actually Iphones & Ipads have this function built in. That works fine too except that they don't have very strong reception because you are relying on their relatively weak radio.

[ITGabs]

Using a DD-WRT flashed router in repeater mode will help with the problem of weak wifi signal mainly because as already suggested you can often locate the device in a part of the room where the signal is strongest.

However, because many hotels require you to login via a web browser with username & password, the above solution won't help to share internet access among multiple devices because you can only login with one device at a time and sometimes only one device for the duration of your account (by regsitering your MAC address).

To solve this problem I use one of these:

http://www.invadeit....330n3g-p006973/

It is a tiny travel router which along with all the normal wifi functions can also operate in "hotspot mode" allowing you to login to the hotels gateway and then share that wifi account with as many devices as you like. You can place or hang the unit from anywhere where there is an AC or USB power source.

Actually Iphones & Ipads have this function built in. That works fine too except that they don't have very strong reception because you are relying on their relatively weak radio.

nice device!!! good price too, you tested the 3g with true 3g chips?

[Dork]

No I haven't tried that yet because I don't have a 3G USB dongle, but you are right I should give it a go. Then it would be a complete solution for travelling. I hate paying hotels USD20/day for crappy internet access.

[ITGabs]

I was thinking that had a native support for 3G chip, not by usb modem, still it's better that support usb modem so new 4G technologies are welcome