Comments on: An exercise in wireless frustration

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:12:00 +0000

I have a SpeedTouch 780WL, on BeBox, and I wanted to extend the range of the Network with an Apple AirPort Express (AX). It was very fiddly. In the end got it to work; you have to have the AX on WDS remote with the speedtouch MAC and have configured the Speedtouch under Home network-> Wireless-> configure WDS and add the AX network that it scans for. In the end had to give them the same SSID otherwise it wouldn't work. I also had to have both of them plug in via Ethernet because the Speedtouch goes down while scanning for networks in the WDS configure page so your computer will connect to the AX (obviously not a problem if you have differenet SSID's but I couldn't get that to work).

By: Bruce

Bruce — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:36:40 +0000

Glad it's not just me icerabbit; I do feel sorry for all those folk out there with even less networking know-how who must be really struggling.

Unfortunately my current router doesn't give me access to a list of allowed MAC addresses; I had used this as a further security layer for my previous router.

By: icerabbit

icerabbit — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:02:45 +0000

I don't have any experience with Apple base stations, but the puzzle you went through even happens without mixing (router) brands.

Wanting to expand wireless range (discontinuing an older 802.11b router as 2nd base) I once opted for the Linksys range expander. It did not work with their factory install CD, not with the manual / advanced method, nor with an online documented alternate method. I had to call in, supposedly the device is compatible with only 'select' Linksys products for regular setup. The undocumented method was to disable all wifi, make a direct wired connection to the expander, configure, then configure the regular router to settings compatible with the expander. It then still was not compatible with the security protocols. I considered the thing DOA and am back on two routers ;)

One way I have avoided cross platform wireless access headaches (old & new hardware, old & new protocols) is by using network access control so that only registered MAC addresses are allowed on the network. Unfortunately the list of allowed machines is generally limited. With legacy machines, notebooks (2 NICs) and handhelds, you can hit the 20-24 MAC address limit pretty soon.