Now we're getting somewhere

This Friday was the last day I worked on the ASUS WL-500g Premium Routers, but I've been out of town for the weekend and never got a chance to write about it. Not that there is much to brag about. With the DD-WRT firmware it was pretty easy to configure the routers to work in WDS (Wireless Distribution System). They all talked one to the other, everything was all fine. Until...

It all got turned upside down when I've tried to implement a measure of protection. You see, in WDS, you have the option of selection which type of network you want to use: B-only, G-only or mixed from what I can remember. The first type I saw this I was like "What the hell are these?" Even now I'm somewhat confused. I've found a pretty good explanation about it here: http://cwnp.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1244. Everything was fine up to this point. Only the problem is WDS can't accept WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) except if it's set to use a G-only network. That shouldn't be a problem if you use a laptop to access the Internet. But since this guy wants to have access on his mobile phone, we have a problem. The phone doesn't work in G-only WDS. It manages to connect to the first router, the one that's closest to it or has the stronger signal. But after that it can't go any further. WDS is not working. So we were forced to switch to a mixed network type in the settings. It started to work again. We were on the right path. Until we remembered that we need to implement at least a method of protection. So this guy, although I told him that WPA will work only if the network is set as G-only, went ahead and placed a WPA pre-shared key protection. And guess what? It didn't work. The WDS stopped functioning so I guess we're stuck with a WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). An older and less secure method of protecting your network, but I guess it's better that nothing.

I'll get back to those routers as soon as the guy that has them returns to the country. He'll be gone for two weeks. Until then, I'll try to find out how to implement a VPN (Virtual Private Network) server and what else we can do with there cute little toys.