[AccessD] Finally! Second access point in my house

Well, I finally accomplished it, creating a second WIRED wireless access point at the far end of a 
cable at my house.

I am doing the "responsible parent" thing and creating the public location computer for my kids, out 
in the living room.  Unfortunately the available location was across the room from the cable that I 
had run for my Windows Media Center PC, so I needed wireless.  While I had a wireless access point 
mid house in the basement directly under my wife's office, by the time the signal got up to the PC 
in the living room it was just too weak to hold a reliable connection.

I have been trying for AGES to get a second access point in the house.  It seems so simple, place a 
second wireless AP (a wireless router) at the far end of the cable and let it broadcast on a 
different channel.  Well.... I had tried and tried and TRIED different things but last night, quite 
by accident(kinda) I found the solution.

The solution in MY CASE was to turn off the SPI firewall, turn off the DHCP server, set the channel 
to the far end away from the other AP (primary AP on channel 11 and secondary on channel 1), and 
feed the data into the AP via the router ports - NOT the WAN port.  To be honest, feeding the WAN 
port MIGHT work, however once I got it running (which happened feeding it via the router port) I 
didn't go back and try it.

A wireless router has two independent interfaces, each of which requires an IP address to access. 
However it is the router interface which is used to program the router, and this IP address normally 
sits at 192.168.0.1.  In my case I had changed my address range to 192.168.122.1 to 192.168.122.255. 
  Thus my main router sits at 192.1687.122.1.

My second access point had to be modified to be something in the 192.168.122.x range so I put it up 
at the top end, 192.168.122.149.  Thus to program that router (the second AP) I had to now use that 
address.

Though it is hard to tell precisely, I think the key was to turn off the firewall.  The radio used 
to transmit the signal appears to hang off of the WAN side of the box, which is why I was originally 
trying to feed the signal into the wan port, but with the wan side not connected to the internet, 
the SPI firewall is no longer needed.

So that is it.  I have successfully turned a full on router into a simple wireless access point 
hanging on the far end of a cable.  I have more signal than you can shake a stick at in my living 
room, and that part of life is good at Colby Manor.

-- 
John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com