Update October 23, 2011: Last week, this bridge stopped working. In the meantime, this low-cost wireless bridge not only is used during the day by Autobahn’s employees in the remote building to access company data, but allows the business owner to add a second DVR (digital video recorder) and surveillance cameras to his newly leased building, and monitor them remotely from his smartphone, just as he now monitors his main building’s cameras. We’ll probably add a permanent reflector later. (20 dB is considered to be a good minimum.) We briefly experimented with adding reflectors behind the two antennas of the WRT54GS, and saw the SNR increase by 3, 6, maybe even 10 dB with no effort. The wireless link has been rock-solid, with a 25 to 35 dB (deciBel) signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The results, with very little effort, exceeded my expectations. How well does the new wireless bridge work? We configured it so that it’s a client of the existing WiFi (IEEE 802.11b/g) network. I eventually found a copy on a UK-based site, and updated our WRT54GS with it, before replacing it with DD-WRT v24-sp2 (12/18/09) mini. They removed it from the download section of their website at the end of July. bin extension) of Linksys’ latest firmware. The hardest part of getting started was finding an image file (with a. I chose the “mini” version of DD-WRT because it fits within the 3 Megabytes of memory that’s occupied by Linksys’ firmware. The DD-WRT firmware includes options to configure the wireless router as the client side of a wireless bridge and as a wireless repeater. We replaced the Linksys firmware with the popular DD-WRT firmware, specifically, DD-WRT v24-sp2 (12/18/09) mini. We chose the Linksys WRT54GS because it’s very popular and third-party open-source firmware is readily available at little or no cost. ![]() We did it by using a low-cost off the shelf router/wireless access point (“AP”), replacing its firmware, and configuring it so that it, together with the existing AP in the main building, forms a wireless bridge into the new leased building. I helped a client, Autobahn Performance Inc., expand their growing network into a leased building across the street from their main building - a distance of about 180 feet. Today, we can often use low-cost consumer-grade WiFi components to do the job. How can we tie everyone together, so they can work on the same databases, share the same printers and Internet firewall, etc? At one time this would mean running fiberoptic cable or establishing a microwave link between the two buildings. Frequently, this means leasing space in detached buildings. Two nearby buildings share network resources via a wireless bridgeĪ growing business needs floor space to expand. Here’s a low-cost way to expand your network into nearby buildings, even if they’re separated by public streets.
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