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GeertN
@jnj.com

GeertN

Anon

Bridge to WAG54G

Hello all,

Before i purchase a WAG54G, i want to know if their is a working solution to bridge a WIRED lan to this router ??
The WAP54G can be put in AP/Bridge mode, but will only bridge to another WAP54G. Will it connect to the WAG54G ?
Has anyone connected a wired lan via wireless (bridged) to the WAG54G ?

Please note that besides bridging to the wired lan, the WAG54G must also still be able to support another wireless PC directly.....

Any ideas/suggestions appreciated.

prestonlewis
Premium Member
join:2003-04-13
Sacramento, CA

1 edit

prestonlewis

Premium Member

The WAG54G should work nicely as an AP to serve a bridge and other wireless PC's as you asked about. Theoretically, an AP can serve around 250 clients so a bridge and 1 wireless PC should be no problem for it at all. No problems there. Some people might argue that buying both the DSL modem and the AP together in one unit isn't the thing to do, and the WAG54G has pretty weak transmitting power at 18dBm compared with the Linksys WRT54G and GS which default to 28dBm and are designed to transmit up to 84dBm if you use alternative firmware like HyperWRT or sveasoft.com's Alchemy firmware.

So if your wireless network involves a lot of distance or walls, you may want to buy the WAG54G but keep your receipt, test it for a few days, and see if the power levels are OK with you because you can't change the transmit power in the WAG54Gs, unless I've missed something about them. If transmit power is important to you, a WRT54G or WRT54GS along with a separate DSL modem might be a better choice since it's default transmit power is significantly higher and you can do even better than default if you know how to install alternative firmware.

As for the WAP54G, it should connec to any AP if it is in bridge mode. It isn't limited to just connecting to another WAP54G, to the best of my knowledge, it should work just fine with any Linksys wireless AP device. However, it also has a low transmit power level (15dBm). Again, if distance or lots of walls exist between your AP and bridge, the WAP54G might have low connectivity with that level of transmit power. You might look for a bridge with a higher transmit power than that. And again, the WRT54G and GS wireless routers will bridge using sveasoft.com's alternative firmware, again up to 84dBm. It's one reason why those 2 wireless router's are so popular. You can achieve multiple times the power of most wireless devices at a reasonable price. I hope this helps some and doesn't sound like too much of a plug for the WRT routers. Sorry if it does.

Geertn
@jnj.com

Geertn to GeertN

Anon

to GeertN
Thanks very much for your excellent post. Just what i needed. The only drawback: if i choose the WRT54G, i'll have to buy an ADSL modem in addition, which makes the solution more expensive....

prestonlewis
Premium Member
join:2003-04-13
Sacramento, CA

prestonlewis

Premium Member

said by Geertn:

The only drawback: if i choose the WRT54G, i'll have to buy an ADSL modem in addition, which makes the solution more expensive....
True, but you can find them for cheap on eBay. I do have have 2 ADSL modems sitting in my home, an older Wirespeed that still works fine using SBC's DSL and a newer DSL modem that came with my previous SBC DSL service. I don't use either one and will eventually eBay them as other's are doing. So if you have time, buy a used DSL modem that is compatable with your DSL provider. Just make sure it's from a seller with lots of good feedbacks and you're likely to have a good experience, although it's hard to tell sometimes with eBay.