Mac Forum / General / Networking / March 2005

Due to signal strength issues - with the router in the basement, three
computers on top floor of a three level house - I needed to get some
kind of relay for  my WiFi network. First I thought of a power line
extention like Netgear's WGXB102 - "wireless range extender".

Now that appears hard to get where I live, but then I realized then I
saw that AP Express has the capability to extend the range of an
existing AP network. And was cheaper than the WGXB102 ...

However, following the instructions, I fail to set it up as a remote
nbase station with my Netgear WGT624 as the WDS primary base station.
AP Express *sees* the router, I have entered the MAC address of the
router both under Internet and WDS. I have set the IP manually, and
an address range of 8 adresses to distribute - on the same subnet.
Still I can't connect to the router, unless I plug an ethernet cable
from the router to the AP Express.
But the point was to get rid of 15 meters of patch cable ...

I am obviously missing something. I can think of 3 things:

- the primary base station has to be an Apple Airport base station.
- my Netgear router doesn't support WDS remote base stations.
- there is something wrong with my settings.

Any ideas ? I'm out of them.

BTW, even from the basement, next to the router, AP Express gives a
better signal - stronger and more stable - than the router. But I will
move it up, at least to the ground floor, to be sure.