Wireless to DM500 (working but not ideal)

[z1gg33]

Hi,

Have a setup where I have an AP in the office, and I have just connected another AP (in client mode) to the dreambox. its working fine... watching it right now (whilst downloading in the background), kinda cool.

anyway,

the only way I could get it to work was to have AP (in offcie) broadcast the SSID, now once its disabled, no good. enable boom straight off the bat works.

this is not ideal, as I would really like to not have the SSID out there? it has wpa encryption on, but still?? (Both AP's have MAC filtering on), so DreamAP does not broadcast SSID, and will only alow a connection from office AP, but now office ap has to broadcast SSID for it to work.

anyone know why this is?

Basically all I have done is setup Dm AP in client mode connecting to mac addy of office AP very simple. but as mentioned above if office AP has SSID broadcast disabled (which is the way I like it) then the Dream AP will not connect. I am unclear why that is, considering I specifically telll the Dream AP to connect to mac addy of office AP, why does it need to see the SSID?

anyone shed any light?

[z1gg33]

this has me stumped....

if office AP has SSID disabled then Dream AP will not connect
Dream AP will only connect to office AP's mac? (as i have left the SSID of office AP out, so it only knows the office AP MAC addy)

scratching my head...

just on casual observations.... this seems to act better than having it wired... buggered if I know why. has not dropped out once, and my connection IS MAXED out! i'm tempted to see how recording goes? (yeah dreaming here)

[vbthanks]

Whack them in bridge mode and put the MAC addresses of each router/wap in the other rouer/wap.

[z1gg33]

heres the rub.... one AP does not have bridge mode? it has AP,
WDS with AP,WDS, Repeater, and wireless client.

Is WDS another way to say bridge.




edit: the answer is yes!!!

cheers dude. will try that

[z1gg33]

bit of feedback.... bit tired tonight so have not spent much time..

but the ONLY way i could get it to work (aka see each other) was to set one AP to WDS + Client. the other AP, if I set to bridge, then I lost the ablility to set WPA encryption....

oh well try next few days...

edit: just a bit more info.

Office AP has SSID enabled. and I remove MAC filtering on both APS

office AP gets set to WDS with AP, and the mac addy of DreamAP

DreamAP gets set to bridge with Office AP Mac.

dreamap sees office AP but can not connect to it and I lose the ability to set WPA enctyption.

[urban_s0ulja]

try upgrading the firmware in the tplink unit.

if my memory serves correctly there was a slight issue with WPA2 encryption on these units, overcome in latter firmware releases

[z1gg33]

cheers Urban,

did that did not seem to help. AT LEAST it tells me that when I switch it to Bridge it will disable the security settings... (warning pop up)

i think i'll just use officeAp as AP with broadcast SSID and wpa encrytpion and mac filtering.

DreamAP is just a wireless client... with mac filtering/wpa so hopefully that will be secure enough...

might look into it next week.....

edit: just been reading a bit.. found this
"Please note that in majority of cases you will find that bridge mode does not support any type of encryption which uses dynamic encryption key (e.g. WPA, WPA-PSK, WPA2, WPA2-PSK). You will only be able to use WEP encryption in Bridge mode.

Some devices however can offer WPA-PSK support in bridge mode"

so in my case office AP can do wds+ap with wp2, but dreamAP will be able to use bridge, but not have any security???