RT-N66U in Bridge Mode

[vondiesel]

My workplace (a university medical/research campus) is shut down due to concerns about spread of coronavirus, so I'm tele-working for the next 2 weeks. My old laptop is still a solid performer, but it has the world's worst WiFi card. It's an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230, and they're known to be garbage. I've had major connectivity issues the past 2 days. But a while back I replaced my old N66U with an AC86U (love it!!!), and I finally remembered that I still have the N66U. I pulled it out of storage, did a hard reset, then set it up in Media Bridge mode and connected it to my laptop with an ethernet cable. BOOM! Within a few minutes I had rock-solid connectivity over 5G with 450/450 speeds, and I didn't have to un-social-distance myself to go out and buy a new laptop or a USB WiFi dongle.

Modern problems require modern solutions.

Best of luck to all of you out there dealing with this rather unique situation. Stay well!

 

[wouterv]

Dropping a very late additional note:
I figured longer ago that the RT-N66U in Bridge mode is happiest with a manual configured IP address.
I had my router (RT-AC68U) at 19.168.1.1 with the DHCP range starting at 192.168.1.3.
The RT-N66U in Bridge mode IP address 192.168.1.2, DNS and Default Gateway 192.168.1.1.

 

[vondiesel]

Dropping a very late additional note:
I figured longer ago that the RT-N66U in Bridge mode is happiest with a manual configured IP address.
I had my router (RT-AC68U) at 19.168.1.1 with the DHCP range starting at 192.168.1.3.
The RT-N66U in Bridge mode IP address 192.168.1.2, DNS and Default Gateway 192.168.1.1.

Better late than never.

Thanks for the tip. My 2 weeks at home turned into 2 months. Fortunately I was able to work at full effort the whole time. I ended up purchasing a new laptop with excellent WiFi, and I've been back to work for about 3 weeks.

But the old laptop will still be used at home by other family members, so I will still used the the N66U. I did notice some occasional disconnects, maybe once a week or so. A quick router reboot solved them, but I'll try the manual IP to see if stability is better that way. Cheers!