TomatoUSB

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!

Did you set the default gateway to be your primary router, and disable DHCP on the bridge? (assuming of course you want the primary router to be handling DHCP requests)

Indeed, the gateway is set correctly on all devices (including bridge) and I've disabled DHCP on the bridge. The client devices behind the bridge do see network broadcast traffic, and as such are getting assigned IPs from the router. (But broadcasts are the only things the clients see.)

I just flashed the 2.6 kernel version of the shibby firmware to the router and reconfigured everything. (NVRAM cleared!) Still getting pretty much the same results. Here are all the steps I took:

1. Administration:
a. changed password and pasted in my ssh public key
2. Basic -> Network:
a. WAN: disabled
b. LAN: br0: set IP to the one I've reserved for the bridge (192.168.0.253)
c. LAN: br0: disable DHCP
d. Default gateway: set to the router's IP (192.168.0.254)
e. Static DNS: set to router's IP
f. Wireless -> Wireless Mode: Wireless Ethernet Bridge
g. (all other wifi settings match my network)

Am I missing anything? Again I've no problems connecting to the wifi network.

Something else I just noticed: pinging a machine behind the bridge from elsewhere on the network seems to work just fine. So it's only traffic from the router to the bridge that's getting dropped.

Ugh.

Correction: only traffic from the router to one of the hosts _behind_ the bridge is getting dropped. I can ping the router from the bridge and vice-versa.

1. I don't quite understand your problem. Are you having no lan access or internet when you connect wired to your "WEB" router?

2. Do you know the difference betweern "Ethernet bridge network" and "Wireless ethernet bridge"?
If you want to use the secondary router as extended AP, you need to use "Ethernet bridge". Your above enumerated listing is correct. You also need to make secondary router set mode to "Routing", under Advanced->Routing->Mode. As for security, use wpa2 for both main and secondary router, password don't need to be the same.
Wireless ethernet bridge means that you will not be using wired connection but rather use your wireless acting as wired connecting to main router. With this connection, only the 4ports + 1(if wan is set as ordinary port) is working.

leandroong: I'm trying to configure a wireless ethernet bridge. The issue I'm having is that the hosts plugged into the wired side of the bridge receive no IP traffic from the router, except for broadcast traffic. They can talk to anything else on both sides of the bridge, however.

A couple additional updates on this: I also tried flashing DD-WRT onto the bridge device and got the exact same behavior. Plus, I started up a wifi tethering app on my phone and was able to make the bridge work as expected when connected to that. Based on these data points, I'm forced to assume that the problem is not in the bridge, but in the router. This has me discouraged because:

1. I really like the shibby firmware and don't relish hopping around to different firmwares on the router. That alone will probably eat up the majority of a weekend and anger my facebook-addicted wife.

2. I've been over all of the settings in the router several times and see nothing that would prevent wireless ethernet bridging from working.

3. tcpdump on the router's LAN interfaces shows that they appear to be sending responses back toward the bridge. I have no idea _where_ the traffic is getting dropped and no idea how else to test. (I don't currently have any spare wifi device capable of monitor mode.)

IP Traffic will not work if Status->Logs is not enabled. Check if this helps. I'm using extended AP point with no problem with IP-TRAFFIC.

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@eil - I just noticed that you said you are using the K2.6 version on the WRT54GL bridge. Have you tried a MIPS R1 K2.4 build? Older routers can work better on these builds. No idea if it will actually solve your problem though.