Dell TrueMobile 2300 Wireless Broadband Router as a repeater

Hi

Please go through this link and it will help you

The configuration has to be done on the advanced settings page...

 

Regards

System: Inspiron 5100, 2.4GHz, 60GB, 64-meg ATI 7500, Dell 1300 wireless card, D-Link Dl-714P+ as base router, TrueMobile 2300 on repeater mode (wireless bridge).

It has been a long road so far. The object of the exercise was to allow my daughter to use the internet in her room, at the far end of the house from the basement room in which are networked 3 computers (other than the Dell). First, I started with the 2300 alone. Eventually, after using the suggestions from these boards, I was able to get a stable signal (disable bluetooth, disable powersave, limit transmission speed to 2 MB). Unfortunately, the signal was weakest in my daughter's room and the internet connection was unuseable.

I purchased a D-link range extender (DSL-800AP+). That extended the range of the wireless signal but did not allow internet connection.

I am now trying the D-link DI-714P+. After a few unsuccessful iterations, I settled on the following. (Fortunately, it is possible to reset the 2300. If you can't reset it after a faulty configuration, you may not be able to regain access to the internet utility. The pin-hole at the back of my 2300 works). I use the 2300 default settings for the IP range in the D-link. I set the 2300 to Access Point mode, enabled wireless bridge, entered the MAC address of the D-link (tired both WAN and LAN MAC addresses). Channel 6 is used.

The wireless signal is strong in my daughter's room, from which I conclude that the 2300 is successful in extending the wireless signal. But there is no internet connection. Having said that, there must be an internet connection of sorts as I can gain access to the 192.168.2.1 utility for the 2300 on the Inspiron. So, a strong signal and the ability to connect to the utility but no ability to connect to the internet.

I may be wrong, but it seems that success may be only a few settings away. Then again, maybe I'm deluding myself. Any suggestions?  

 

 

I give up. I will be returning the machine and the router. I recognize that Dell will require that I speak with some nameless technician in India. I have done that, with no success. They promised to phone me at home but did not. The customer support persons sympathized but told me that I had to first log a report with the nameless ones.

Enough is enough. The Sale of Goods Act of my jurisdiction provides that goods must be of merchantable quality and fit for the purpose for which they were purchased. This product is neither. While Dell policies may stipulate that ridiculous procedures must be followed, I prefer to take the legal route and cancel the sale. Simple as that.

The Dell business model is fine if the technology is relatively stable. Wireless is not. The Dell business model may also be fine if the technology is not overly complex. Wireless networking is. Consumers have been sold a bill of goods. I simply do not have the time any more to devote to the arcana of wireless networking.

Caveat emptor.

Spent about four hours tonight trying to set up the 2300 as a "wireless" bridge ... or repeater.  A few lessons learned:

1. You need to "hard wire" both routers to program them.  In other words, you have to start off designating one router as a gateway and the other as a bridge.  Program the bridge first; disconnect, then program the gateway. 
2. Each router has to have the MAC address of the other router listed in the advanced settings|advanced wireless section of the router set up. 
3. DHCP needs to be disabled in the "bridge," but not in the gateway.  (Be careful, once you disable DHCP in the bridge, it is difficult to communicate with it to reprogram it.)
4. If the set up is working, the "wireless" light of the router communicating with the distant computer will glow.  The wireless light on the gateway will not glow if it is only transmitting to the bridge. 
5. Tech support from Dell was helpful ... especially in addressing the MAC addressing and DHCP settings.
6. The MAC addressing is confusing in the documentation ... and (while logical), the DHCP information is not documented anywhere. 
7. The properties of the wireless card in the remote computer may tell you the MAC address of the router with which the remote computer is communicating (very helpful if you are trying to ensure that the bridge is actually doing the communicating).
8. The bridge will make a connection with a remote computer even if it is not receiving a signal from the gateway. 

Well, an update may be of help to some. I eventually bought another truemobile, as opposed to another brand name, to act as a repeater. It now works, and some comments are in order:

1. One of the points to remember is that the gateway's MAC address is entered into the repeater and the repeater's MAC address is entered into the gateway. The repeater is set to access point.

2. The thread above actually contains the answer but I did not read the instructions literally enough.

3. My XP computer drops its connection, often, on logon. This is almost always corrected by going to dos, entering cmd, entering ipconfig/release (wait 2 seconds) and entering ipconfig/renew (wait 2 seconds).

4. For a Windows 98 computer, the above commands are "command" in dos, typing in "winipcfg" and then a screen appears. Punch the "release" button and then punch the "renew" button.

5. It would actually be quite useful to write a batch file or some script to do the above, but that is another learning curve. The above procedures, as I understand it, allow the dynamic addressing system to work when something has become unstuck.

6. A glutton for punishment, I moved my daughter's desktop to her room, bought a wireless network card and was not at all surprised when there was no connection. The technician for D-Link, who was not based in India and could be reached during regular hours and even into the evening, told me that I had a defective card and that I should return it. Wrong.

7. The problem was a corrupt registry. Yes, I know, it just seems to get worse all the time. To correct that problem,  I found a thread in "Tek-Tips" (581-177979) entitled "Can pin network connections but cannot access internet". It is long thread but it contains instructions for modifying the registry to allow internet connection.

8. A useful dos command in windows 98 is "scanreg". It backs up your registry for the 4 or 5 preceding days. So if you install some software that corrupts the registry, you can re-establish a prior version that worked.

 

Sorry if this is disjointed.

Most WiFi-G APs I've looked at on the market only bridge/repeat when using WEP.  Is it the same for the 2300 or can it work in bridge mode using WPA?

My repeater 2300 is not set to use WEP.

What I meant to say is, if you choose to encrypt the wireless bridge, it seems only WEP can be used.  Has anyone tried using WPA with the 2300 in bridge/repeater mode?

Thanks to this thread I was able to configure my 2nd 2300 as a bridge. I have 1 major problem however. It is slow as a snail. I have a Playstation 2 connecting to my 2nd 2300. It streams video and audio from my PC. I have used this with a wired connection for a while now and it works great. It is too slow with the 2300 used as a bridge. The video will not play. Internet surfing is slow as well.

Any tips?

We had to "play" with the location of the distant router in order to address the speed issue.  Actually, speed increased when the "distant" router was closer to the distant computer and further from the first router.  (The distant computer is a laptop, and its wireless card has an internal [short range in my humble opinion] antenna.)

Hope this helps. 

I gave it one more shot last night. I reset both routers by using the pinhole in the back. I switched routers (probably had nothing to do with it, but what the heck) and reconfigured everything starting with the gateway. After configuring the bridge, I plugged one of my wired machines in and... nothing happened. I figured maybe both routers might need a reboot so I unplugged them both and plugged them back in starting with the gateway. Success! The big test was, did any of this make a difference? It made a huge difference. I could tell right away that web traffic was flowing faster. My video is now streaming over this connection just as well as it did over the wired connection. I just wish I really knew what the problem was.

Now on to port forwarding and security. Anyone have luck with these?

I have two Truemobile 2300 that I wanted to bridge.  I tried for more hours than I can count to try to get it all working with WPA security.  I could only get it working with either WEP or no security.

Other observations:

The DCHP server settings on the AP side doesn't seem to matter because the DHCP server on the gateway side is used if the two units are bridged.  Before they are bridging, the IP address and DHCP settings of the AP are the ones used. 

After they are bridged, I cannot communicate with the AP side router.  I even tried setting the AP side IP address to something different. 

I think there is some sort of hidden override one they are bridged.  So always configure the AP side last.