Hi! I tried to create a wikidot account for this forum, but after doing so it won't let me log in. I never get an error message, it just drops me back to the website without logging me in. So I hope this post doesn't get lost in the ether (*snicker*).
Due to the layout of my new house, running ethernet cable upstairs to the office is going to be a real PITA. So for now, I want to set up a wireless bridge so that I don't have to buy wifi adapters for all of my computers and devices in the office. I've read that this works well and it seems like I got something like this working years and years ago with DD-WRT. But now I'm not having as much luck.
I have a router in my basement (the screamin' Asus RT-N66U) with Tomato Shibby on it (build 100, I believe). The router works great, no complaints.
For the bridge, I used an old WRT54GL and also installed Tomato Shibby on it (build 101, I think?). After the install, I changed the IP to an unused address on my network and configured it as a Wireless Ethernet Bridge. It connects to my wifi network just fine. While logged into the bridge via SSH, I can access everything on the local network and on the Internet.
However, hosts connected to the wired side of the bridge have connectivity issues. They can get a DHCP address and can see broadcast traffic on the network, but nothing addressed to them seems to make it back through the bridge. I've verified this via tcpdump. When I ping the router (via IP) from a host on the wired side of the bridge, I see the ICMP packets hit the router and it seems to be sending them back, but the bridge doesn't see them. Or if it does, it is not forwarding them to the wired host. (I'd like to be able to "sniff the air" to see whether the router is actually sending them, but I don't have any wifi device with a monitor mode.) I've checked the ARP tables on every device involved and they seem to be fine. All IP addresses are associated with their respective MAC addresses.
Since I'm at the limits of my networking knowledge here, I have to assume that the bridge is ignoring packets addressed to wired hosts behind it because nothing told it to forward them to the ethernet switch. If that's the case, how exactly would a wireless ethernet bridge work anyway? Am I trying to use it wrong? Or is Tomato (Shibby) is just broken for this task?
I'm posing these questions because I really do want to get to the bottom of this instead of going the cheap route and just keep trying other firmwares until it works. :)
Thanks!