11-27-2018, 06:30 PM
A longshot, but... do we by any chance have any networking gurus on here? Over the past year I've been trying to solve a home networking problem, but I'm not getting anywhere. In a nutshell:
1. There is no way I can neatly run an ethernet cable from the broadband-connected router two rooms away from my home studio/computer room. So I'm forced to use USB wireless adapters on my machines, which leads to many problems. I.e. frequent interference from the wireless adapter when running a DAW, so I have to unplug it and plug it back in when I'm done making music; bad reception which results in download speeds varying wildly; constantly high CPU usage from the USB wireless; not being able to network one computer at all, since it runs Win 98 and doesn't support modern wifi security.
2. I thought I could solve this by using a second router and bridging it wirelessly with the main one. Like this:
[Router 1, connected to the broadband jack] <-- wireless --> [Router 2, connected via ethernet to computers]
And it works I guess... if I am willing to use the unsafe WEP security or have no security at all. WPA/WPA2 appear to be incompatible with wireless bridging in most routers. In fact I have a heap of different routers here but none appear to offer anything more secure than WEP when bridged.
3. So... does anyone here have any experience with stuff like this? It appears it's not even possible to find a listing anywhere of which routers support WPA/WPA2 when bridged, which I find odd. I mean it's a corner case, but still. Is there any other clever way I could make this work? Again, running long cables is not an option.
1. There is no way I can neatly run an ethernet cable from the broadband-connected router two rooms away from my home studio/computer room. So I'm forced to use USB wireless adapters on my machines, which leads to many problems. I.e. frequent interference from the wireless adapter when running a DAW, so I have to unplug it and plug it back in when I'm done making music; bad reception which results in download speeds varying wildly; constantly high CPU usage from the USB wireless; not being able to network one computer at all, since it runs Win 98 and doesn't support modern wifi security.
2. I thought I could solve this by using a second router and bridging it wirelessly with the main one. Like this:
[Router 1, connected to the broadband jack] <-- wireless --> [Router 2, connected via ethernet to computers]
And it works I guess... if I am willing to use the unsafe WEP security or have no security at all. WPA/WPA2 appear to be incompatible with wireless bridging in most routers. In fact I have a heap of different routers here but none appear to offer anything more secure than WEP when bridged.
3. So... does anyone here have any experience with stuff like this? It appears it's not even possible to find a listing anywhere of which routers support WPA/WPA2 when bridged, which I find odd. I mean it's a corner case, but still. Is there any other clever way I could make this work? Again, running long cables is not an option.