Hi: I was intrigued by episodes 3 and 38, where you used dd-wrt and two routers to form a wifii ...

[G+_James Taylor]

Hi:

I was intrigued by episodes 3 and 38, where you used dd-wrt and two routers to form a wifii bridge between two locations. So I purchased two TP Link routers, installed dd-wrt on them and put one next to my airport extreme router and the other connected to my apple tv. I found that this generally works well to stream itune movies to the TV, but fails when streaming with airplay.

 

 The issue appears to be related to the way DNS handles "local". Using "ping", I found that it would find apple-tv.local on the router side of bridge, but not find it on the apple tv side.

 

Is there a way around this problem?

[G+_Thomas Behrens]

Something to consider when you set up the second router are you using dhcp on that router? If you are the internet stuff will work fine, but anything internal such as air play will not be able to work. The reason is you would be setting up a separate network within the network. It will allow information to pass through the network and back, but services that are designed to work intranet will not pass between the networks.

Good luck

Tom

[G+_James Taylor]

Hi Tom:

 

Thanks for responding.

 

I've tried about every possible combination, that I can think of and finally settled on dhcp forwarder to the airport extreme, for the airport extreme side of the bridge and  wireless "Client Bridge" on the apple tv side of the bridge. In the bridge mode, the user doesn't have a dhcp option.

 

Jim

[G+_Ryan Murray]

I was going to say you don't need two routers just one dd-wrt for a client bridge will suffice

[G+_James Taylor]

Ryan Murray

[G+_James Taylor]

Ryan Murray

[G+_James Taylor]

Thanks, I didn't know this. So all you need is an access point on the server side. Interesting.

 

In my case, I was also seeing how far I could stretch the bridge on the 5GHz band using patch antennas. As airport extreme doesn't have external antenna ports, I had to have the extra router anyway. By the way, I was able to get a good 1/4 mile, with a -53 to -60 db signal. Note bad, with routers that only puts out 18 milliwatts of power.

[G+_Ryan Murray]

Personally I would get one of those ASUS wireless N that can run ddwrt and a couple 5 GHz wireless bridges depending on how far you need reception. DD-wrt is highly flexible and has lots of cool features. If you want to use the extreme you could use a repeater bridge which will repeat the signal as well as be on the same network.

[G+_James Taylor]

I have to say, DD-wrt has a lot of flexibility. I just wish, I could figure out why I can't get apple-tv.local to show up on both sides of the bridge, as both ends are on the same subnet.

[G+_Ryan Murray]

Did you set the bridge IP to the same range but different IPS such as 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 matching what scheme is on the airport?

[G+_Ryan Murray]

Also you know 5ghz doesn't deliver range its more aimed for speed across short distances

[G+_James Taylor]

That's true, but I can get really small 19db 5Ghz antenna, which aren't available for the 2.5 Ghz band. With these on both ends, I have a 38db total gain, which is more that enough to compensate for the weak output of the routers at 5 Ghz.

[G+_James Taylor]

Ryan Murray

[G+_James Taylor]

Hi Ryan. I missed your earlier comment about my IP Range.

 

Yes, Both sides of my bridge uses my airport extreme IP address range . My extreme router is set to 10.0.1.1 and its dhcp range is set to 10.0.1.2 through 10.0.1.245. On the extreme, I have reservers set for both sides of the bridge, with the extreme side set to 10.0.1.12 and the apple tv side set to 10.0.1.13. The two bridge routers, reference these two ip addresses as well.

 

The extreme side of the bridge uses the "DHCP forwarder" option, which causes all dhcp requests to be sent back to the extreme router at ip address  10.0.1.1. The apple-tv side is set to wifii bridge.

 

 local DNS, on both sides of the bridge are set to 0.0.0.0, which causes all DNS traffic to be sent back to extreme router.

[G+_Ryan Murray]

But what did you set your bridge IP router address to on the ddwrt main page. You should have it set to something like 10.0.0.2 or something along those line. The bridge should have its own IP in the range of the main router, it should just be transparent and have no dhcp whatsoever and will not assign addresses unless you are connected to the router from the bridge. I've used a ddwrt bridge to stream local media in applications like XBMC on my appletv with a jailbreak an Xbox 360 etc. Have you checked out ddwrt page about client bridge http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Bridge

[G+_James Taylor]

Ryan Murray

[G+_James Taylor]

The extreme side router bridge address is set to 10.0.1.12 and the apple tv side is set to 10.0.1.13. Both of these address were also placed in the extreme router's reserve list.

[G+_Ryan Murray]

Is there a reason you need the extreme in the equation why not run one router as just a router and one as a bridge and eliminate the extreme out of the equation.

[G+_James Taylor]

Actually there is. I have all of my DSL WAN settings in the Airport Extreme and it would be a hassle to move them over to my TP Link and unfortunately, apple-tv requires an internet connection to boot, so I can't simply go without it.

 

I did the next best thing however. Since the extreme has a 5Ghz radio, I set it up as the bridge, base on your earilier suggestion. Unfortunately, I get the same result; proper internet access through the bridge, but no apple-tv access.

[G+_Ryan Murray]

The ddwrt interface simply needs your pppoe/pppoa login and your modem in bridge mode. Or are you using your extreme as a DSL router. Yes I have an apple TV so I realize the importance of having your internet connection. If you want to use the airport you should simply just set the two tp link to wireless bridge mode or are you trying to use the airport to a repeater to a repeater. Because you could place the airport then place one repeater halfway between then another at your apple tv. Repeater bridge will have your devices on the same network but will use different ssids at each point. You can try to use the same ssid on each repeater but sometimes this can create a problem.