Awaisi, Inc.

Using your Linksys Wireless Router in Bridge Mode, or How to Extend your LAN onto your Wireless LAN

For most of us, installation of a wireless router means we wind up having a new segment of network hanging of our main LAN. The LAN may be a 192.168.1.x, while the wireless LAN is a 192.168.100.x segment. As such, our DHCP server on the main LAN segment will not be handing out addresses on the wireless LAN segment. Many network services will be set up for two ranges of addresses.

There is a way to extend existing LAN over the wireless router. Officially, it is called “bridge mode.” In bridge mode, your wireless router, instead of routing between different network segments, bridges between the two physical network segments and extends the first network onto the second.

Now, there is no official entry for bridge mode in the software that comes built in with the Linksys Wireless Router. However, it can be done.Here is how it is done.

1) In the web admin interface of your Linksys Wireless Router, turn off the built-in DHCP server.

2) Set your wireless network name to whatever you wish it to be. Set your WPA key to whatever you wish it to be.

3) On your router, instead of plugging in the cable from your LAN into the WAN port, plug it into port 1.

4) Connect your computer to your wireless network using the network name and WPA key you had set up. Once you are connected to the wireless network, you should be assigned an IP address by your DHCP server on our LAN.

Ta-da! Now, instead of two network segments with two sets of addresses, you have one very large network spanning wired and wireless media.

Enjoy!


Categorised as: IT Services


7 Comments

  1. I trust you would not mind if I posted a part of this site on my univeristy blog?

  2. Thanks for taking the top out to write this great/ article.

  3. Morning, It is nice to stumble upon a good blog like this one. Would you mind if I used some of your info, and I’ll put a link back to your site?

  4. admin says:

    Stephanie,

    That is very kind of you to say. You may, and thank you in advance for the link back.

    Regards,
    Commander Salamander

  5. I often read your blog and always find it very interesting. Thought it was about time i let you know…Keep up the great work

  6. Hey quite decent weblog!!?!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>