# Solved: How to turn a wireless router into an Access Point



## Justinl (Apr 26, 2004)

Hey all, I'm running Win XP Pro on two systems, I have an old Dell TruMobile 2300 router that I'd like to turn into an access point for my upstairs computer. I have removed all encryption on my Netgear wireless router, as well as mac address filtering. I gave the Dell router a static IP, and set it to act as an AP. They are in the same subnet, and their is no IP conflict, however I can't get the upstairs computer with the Dell router to connect to the internet, or even ping my Netgear router with is also the DHCP for the network. Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.


----------



## killah (Jan 9, 2005)

hmmm
that possible?


----------



## jackdw (Jul 1, 2005)

I asked something like this qusetion.

John Will replied with this, it should work in your case:
Connecting two SOHO broadband routers together.

Configure the IP address of the secondary router to be in the same subnet as the primary router, but out of the range of the DHCP server in the primary router. For instance DHCP server addresses 192.168.0.2 through 192.168.0.100, I'd assign the secondary router 192.168.0.254 as it's IP address.

Disable the DHCP server in the secondary router.

Setup the wireless section just the way you would if it was the primary router.

Connect from the primary router's LAN port to one of the LAN ports on the secondary router. If there is no uplink port and neither of the routers have auto-sensing ports, use a cross-over cable. Leave the WAN port unconnected!


----------



## Justinl (Apr 26, 2004)

I was under the impression that you wouldn't need to physically connect the two routers, otherwise I would simply run cable to the computer itself. Is there any way to do this without physically connecting the two routers together?


----------



## Justinl (Apr 26, 2004)

I think I may have an alternative solution to my problem, I'll just pick up a wifi usb stick, and shove it into the pc. The added benefit is that when I don't want the kids to surf the web unsupervised, I can simply unplug the wifi thumb drive. I am still curious though if you can turn a wifi router into an ap without physically connecting it to your original wifi router.


----------



## TerryNet (Mar 23, 2005)

"I am still curious though if you can turn a wifi router into an ap without physically connecting it to your original wifi router."

By definition a Wireless Access Point "extends" an ethernet network to wireless. So the answer to your question is 'No.'

What you really were trying to do is configure the router as a Wireless Bridge, which "extends" a wireless network to wired. A few routers can be configured this way, with the emphasis on "few."


----------



## UNIKSERV (Feb 2, 2002)

If you purchase a router that's supported by open source firmware like dd-wrt then all you need to do is upload the new firmware and you can use your router as a bridge. As an added benefit the router is also able to perform traffic shaping (thought you might appreciate that one for your kids  ). The open wrt firmware is considerably limited in that respect as it's not version 1 yet and I installed it on the WRT54GL yesterday and it looked like it actually had less functionality than if I'd stuck with the original Linksys firmware but I might have been missing something. There's also some open source commercial firmware you can use from Sveasoft. Sveasoft has both a public release and a commercial release and even though the public release works it's not as up to date as the commercial release. You can read a little about this here --> http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3562391 . At dd-wrt you can find firmware for other routers but I don't remember seeing anything for the Dell routers but I was only looking for information on the routers I'd purchased. 
Hope that helps.

Joe


----------



## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

There are a number of routers that will function in bridge or access point mode, you just need to check the specifications of the specific device.


----------

