Up until today my wireless network infrastructure at home consisted of a single Linksys WRT54g (running the Sveasoft Alchemy firmware) and a Linksys WAP54g. The WRT54g was and is connected to our DSL modem and is our gateway to the Internet at 192.168.1.1 on the LAN. It has one wired client, provides 802.11g, and is configured to do WDS so that the WAP54g in the living room could operate as a WDS client and provide a working Internet connection to our TiVo.

Recently, we got a TiVo Series 3 in the living room and decided to move our TiVo Series 1 up to our bedroom. I wanted the Series 1 to be able to connect to the Internet (it has a TurboNET card which provides an Ethernet jack), so I moved the WAP54g up to the bedroom with it. This of course left our Series 3 in the living room without an Internet connection.

Last night we went to Staples, planning to get another WAP54g for the living room, but when we got to the store, we noticed that for some reason, the WRT54g was $50, $20 cheaper than the WAP54g. So I bought the WRT54g, pretty confident that the WRT54g is more powerful than the WAP54g and could do everything that it did.

Well, it does.

In fact, it’s pretty easy with the new WRT54g as it seems that Linksys quietly added support for WDS to the stock firmware. It’s not at all obvious since it’s not mentioned anywhere in the configuration screen, but it apparently works automatically, once you have the prerequisites set up. All I needed to do was set the new WRT54g to a new IP, 192.168.1.2, use the same SSID, wireless channel, and encryption settings, and then go to the WDS screen on the old WRT54g and put in the MAC address of the new WRT54g. Instant extension of my network.