Scenario: I have a ADSL modem inside the studio which is connected with some wired/wireless devices. but when I'm in the backyard with my laptop the wireless signal is very poor, so the connection is very unstable.

I have an old belkin wireless router and I read that it can be useful in this scenario. after some search, it's compatible with DD-WRT, and seems setting it both wireless repeater or wireless bridge can do the job.

but which is better for speed and stability or for my purpose they are the same?

wireless repeater

wireless bridge

3

3 Answers

In most cases, you want to use the Repeater Bridge option. This keeps all the systems on the same subnet -- it's basically a range-extender, with the unlikely-to-affect you issues of MAC filtering already raised. You should not bother using MAC filtering as a security measure (it's useless, provides no security compared with WPA and any hacker can spoof a MAC) and virtually no services rely on MAC, because NAT is so prevalent.

A straight repeater creates a separate subnet for clients of the repeater. Doubt that's what you want.

Also, WDS is highly unlikely to work. WDS only works on nearly identical hardware. It sounds like your old router is not the same as your new one. Also WDS is generally just hyper-touchy. It has the benefit of using a single SSID, but I've never seen them work well. They work for a while, then one of the AP's needs to be reset because it fell out of favor with the others.

Repeater-Bridge mode on DD-WRT just work (most of the time -- I've seen it be touchy on some hardware). It's vastly more reliable and hardware ambivalent than WDS.

2

A wireless bridge would require you to plug your laptop into the Belkin router. If you don't want to do that, you would set it up as a wireless repeater. There's a little more to it than that, you that's the place that I would start with.

edited: I stand corrected:

DD-WRT is combining the functions of a bridge and a repeater. I haven't used DD-WRT that much so I didn't know they had that functionality.

From the article:

"The limitation with standard bridging is that it only allows wired clients to connect to your secondary router. Wireless clients cannot connect to your secondary router configured as a standard bridge.

New in DD-WRT v24 is Repeater Bridge mode. This extends your primary LAN via secondary router (bridge router) and also allows wireless clients to connect to your secondary router."

3

For your situation it should not matter. I have basically the same setup except I have a wired machine in my garage (old E-Mac with no WiFi). I have 2 WRT-54g routers. One in my house on the first floor, the second one in my detached garage.

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