Point To Point Wireless Links

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To make a wireless link between two places (two buildings for example) there are two options. You can either set up an access point and a client, or set up a wireless bridge. The former (AP/Client mode) is quite easy, and the latter (bridge mode) is quite hard. The difficulty with setting up AP/client mode is that it's hard to find access points that operate in client mode, and it's down side is that you loose about 20% of the available bandwidth as overhead. The difficulty with setting up bridge mode is that it's very hard to do because of poor manufacturer documentation, but it's benefit is that it is much more bandwidth efficient.

Perhaps the biggest problem with point to point and point to mylti-point modes is that there is no real standard for them under 802.11 A, B, or G. Each manufacturer employs different techniques to achieve these modes, and as is the case with many (D-link especially) different techniques for different models. This means that unless your two access points are IDENTICAL you can forget about using bridge mode full stop.

We have spent many hours trying to get consumer wireless equipment working as wireless bridges, and let me tell you it's not easy. As a matter of fact we have found that most wireless gear doesn't provide you with enough options in it's web interface to do the job - you have to telnet in to the boxes to get it done. Below is a blog of the equipment that we have made wireless bridges from in the hope that it will help someone somewhere one day benefit from our experience.

DWL 7100 AP Wireless Bridge

We purchased two DWL-7100AP 802.11A wireless bridges from D-link Australia to make our first 802.11A backhaul out of. These units do not have client mode available on the GUI, and we couldn't get the bridge mode to work in either point to point (PTP), or point to multi point (PTMP) mode. Eventually we were able to contact D-Link Australia - but NOT through the call centre (that is a whole other story about call centres and crap customer service), who after months of waiting sent us some config files for the DWL-7100AP's that made them work in bridge mode.

To put your DWL-7100AP's in Bridge mode follow these steps

1.     Download CONFIG FILE 1 and then CONFIG FILE 2

2.     Upload these config files to their respective AP, then reset it.

3.     Set your computer's IP address to 192.168.174.10, with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.224

4.    The AP with CONFIG FILE 1 will now have an IP address of 192.168.174.28 and the other 192.168.174.29

5.    All you have to do now is set the remote MAC addresses up for each AP - to state it as clearly as I can, each   
       access point gets the opposite AP's Mac address. You can find the access point's MAC address on the bottom
       of it's case.

6.    Don't forget to change the access point's password to prevent other people having fun with it :)

7.    The bridged Access Points bind to the MAC address, so you can set your SSID's of each unit to whatever you
       like. Note the SSID will be broadcast.

If you have any questions - contact us and as, as we are always here to help.

As an end not to this story, even after we reverse engineered the config files to see why we couldn't make it work ourselves - we couldn't work it out. It seems that the piss poor documentation that D-link have about their equipment just doesn't provide enough information to users to get their gear to do what it's supposed to do. The link has been up between two buildings mounted on rooftops for a couple of months now and it is ROCK SOLID, so in spite of the pain that we had getting thes units to work, they are now doing their job very nicely indeed.

SENAO NL-5354AP1 Aries

We have spent tens of man hours trying to get these units to work in bridge mode as they are advertised to do. Like the DWL-7100AP these units just don't provide enough information through their GUI to let you do it, and also like the DWL-7100AP the unit's manual is crap, as is the manufacturers web site as far as documentation goes.

So far we have not been able to get the NL-5354AP1 Aires2 access point to operate in bridge mode at all. Fortunately we will be able to use them as a link after all however, because we can set one up as an AP and the other as a client.
What's more, in this configuration we were able to use them at 108 Mbit super A mode.

To put your NL-5354AP1 Aires2 in Bridge mode follow these steps

1.   Set the first NL-5354AP1 Aires2 to access point mode

2.   Set the second NL-5354AP1 Aires2 to be a client of that AP

Both of these steps are straight forward on the GUI, but if you need further help just email us.