Odd Wireless Bridging Problem

[WMConey]

I live in a rural area with only a wireless Internet provider. My neighbor has a view of the antenna so we share the service. I wanted to keep my business network private, so I thought I would put a wireless router in my place and use a wireless bridge between my router and his with his having the actual Internet connection.

So he has an older Linksys WRT54G connected to the internet on its WAN port. I have a Netgear WNR2000 [2.4MHz 300MPS N] with a printer, storage device and DVD player on the LAN ports. I bought a Netgear WCE2000 for a bridge.

Here's the oddness:

1) If I wirelessly connect my laptop [Intel Ultimate N6300] to his WRT54G, I get the full rated speed of the connection.
2) If I plug my Netgear WNR2000 into the Internet connection and wirelessly connect, all good.
3) If I connect the WRT54G to the Internet, run a wired connection from the WNR2000 WAN port to one of the WRT54G LAN ports and wirelessly connect to the WNR2000, all is good.
4) If I use the WCE2000 as a client on my laptop and wirelessly connect to either router, speeds are fine.

When I then connect the WCE2000 wirelessly to the WRT54G[Internet connected] and plug it into the WAN port of the WNR2000, the download speeds are <10% of any other configuration. Upload speeds are fine. This testing done using speedtest.net.

In other words each piece works perfectly by itself, but the combo doesn't. And only the download side is a problem.

I used a very similar setup at another location for two years with no issues. The difference was that there both routers were Linksys WRT54Gs and the bridge was made by Engenius. With that setup, I used 192.168.1.x for the DHCP servers on both routers, just restricted them to different ranges. With the Netgear WNR2000, it refuses to use the same public address group as the Internet connected WRT54G and instead demands that its clients be 10.0.0.x.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

TIA.

 

[thiggins]

The two routers must be on two different subnets. If you have 192.168.1.X on the WAN and LAN ports of the WNR2000, routing won't be possible.

 

[WMConey]

WRT54G uses 192.168.1.x for its DHCP server. The WNR2000 gets 192.168.1.100 from it and uses 10.0.0.x for its wireless clients.

Using the wireless bridge cuts the downlink speed of the WNR2000 clients by 90%, the uplink speeds not at all. CAT5e between the two routers [no NAT / subnetting change] and downlink speeds are fine.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for clarifying the network setup.

I many times see imbalance between up and downlink wireless speeds when testing. But 90% is pretty big.

Have you tried measuring speed using a non-Internet means? Like a large file transfer?

Did you try connecting a client directly to the bridge? BTW, what is a WCE2000? I can't find it anywhere.

 

[WMConey]

It's a netgear wnce2001 [sorry for the confusion - this is what happens working from memory!]:

http://www.netgear.com/home/product...ing-for-home-theater-and-gaming/WNCE2001.aspx

When I attach the wnce2001 to my laptop and use it as my wireless adapter [turning off the one in the laptop itself], it works fine and speeds are normal.

For non-Internet, do you mean a wireless client attached to the WRT54G sending a large file to a wireless client attached to the WNR2000? Haven't tried that.

 

[thiggins]

It's a netgear wnce2001 [sorry for the confusion - this is what happens working from memory!]:

http://www.netgear.com/home/product...ing-for-home-theater-and-gaming/WNCE2001.aspx

When I attach the wnce2001 to my laptop and use it as my wireless adapter [turning off the one in the laptop itself], it works fine and speeds are normal.

Thanks.
The problem could be an incompatibility between the N-based WNCE2001 and the G-based WRT54G. Have you tried setting the WNCE2001 to its G-only mode?
As an alternative, can you just bring back the EnGenius bridge that worked fine?

For non-Internet, do you mean a wireless client attached to the WRT54G sending a large file to a wireless client attached to the WNR2000? Haven't tried that.

Or better, a wired client attached to the WRT54G.

 

[WMConey]

The Engenius failed completely, unfortunately, but the other two suggestions are worth a try. Similar test might be to reverse the WRT54G and WNR2000 and see if using the wnce2001 to bridge the WRT54G to the WNR2000 connected to the Internet works properly.

Thanks for the help.