Problem with wireless access point and wireless router in client mode

peelhere

Reputable
May 21, 2014
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4,510
My main objective was to get wireless internet in our barn which is about 30 yards from our house. The house has a wireless router that is connected to a 10mbs fiberoptic connection.

To accomplish this goal I purchased a TP-Link (TL-WA5210G) set it up on Wireless Client mode so that it could connect to the home wireless network. This worked great. I was able to connect to the TP-Link using an ethernet port, pull a good network IP address and access the internet.

Second step. I purchased a Belkin N300 wireless router, hooked it up and set it to be a wireless access point. This also seemed to work. I was able to log on to the wireless network broadcast from the N300 and log on with my laptop.

The problem is when I try to connect another device to the network (i.e. smartphones, both android and iOS) the devices are not able to pull a valid network IP address. 169.xxx.x.x is all they get.

I've tried to set the TP-Link up to enable DHCP (hoping it would solve the problem), but for some reason this creates a lot of problems. The IP range it doles out is between 192.168.1.100 and 192.168.1.200 (or something close to that on the high end). With DHCP enabled my laptop pulls the 192.168.1.100 address but can not access the internet or even the TP-link router (even when plugged directly into the TP-link), unless I set the laptop to use a static IP address (in the lower ranges i.e. xxx.xxx.x.7).

Any ideas on what the problem might be, and how to solve it? Better way to do this?

THanks!
 
Solution
You need bridge mode for the one in the barn, not client. The router only wants to see one MAC address per standard WiFi connection; bridge mode uses WDS to tell the router that it's allowed more.