It’s been a while since I looked into my wireless bridging implementation. I settled with WDS and stuck with until recently. The WDS wasn’t stable because the routers were falling over and required regular reboots despite the fact that they were running renowned custom firmware Tomato (Shibby Build). In the middle of last year, I came across the ASUSWRT-Merlin review by SmallNetBuilder.
It focused on stability, performance and just enough features to cover my needs. Or so I thought at the time. I was still set on the WDS bridging solution and was disappointed to discover that WDS was only supported WEP encryption. That was unacceptable and thus I kept the two routers involved in the WDS bridge on Tomato. In the mean time, I installed ASUSWRT-Merlin firmware on my RT-N66U.
A few months pass and I noticed that my RT-N66U was rock solid and the resets that I had to perform every so often were no longer required. That lead me to revisit my RT-N16’s firmware situation. I decided to explore alternatives to WDS. During this process, I discovered that Tomato’s WDS+WPA2 implementation was a hack job and wasn’t true to WPA2’s standards. So I officially abandoned WDS and consider ASUS’ built-in Media Bridge and Repeater modes.
I discovered that I couldn’t run in “Media Bridge” mode because it needs two RT-N66Us or above to form the bridge. Since I only had an RT-N16 and RT-N66U at hand, I was forced to use the “Repeater” mode. After some creative physical relocations, I was able to set up the wireless bridge. As long as the signal strength was above 60% (63% at the moment) from the source’s perspective, the connection was sound. I hope it continues to be strong for months. If it falls over, I may have to invest in a more powerful 2.4GHz router.
I’m just looking for an excuse to buy an RT-AC68U but it’s also $200+ and thus I hope this solution holds.
I finished Middle Earth and started Wind Waker HD. I should have a review of Middle Earth done on Wednesday. I’m still chipping away at Dual Destinies but I admit I am taking my time with it because I just don’t want it to end.
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