2 floors, 1 internet connection

I have 1 cable internet connection to my house hooked up to a wireless
router on the main floor. Due to walls/floors/distance, I need to add
an additional wireless router to the basement and run Ethernet to 1
desktop. The devices involved are US Robotics 5461 and Trendnet
TEW-452BRP. I'd like the USR to be in the basement since it has a
built-in print server and the printer is needed in the basement. The
USR has Bridging and WDS capabilities. The Trendnet has an "AP mode."
I've tried different setting combinations, but none would allow me to
access the internet from the basement. Essentially I just want the WAP
in the basement to act as a repeater I guess. I know the terms bridge,
router, repeater, AP all have very technical meanings applying to
different hardware levels, which most laymen are not familiar with
(including me), but I'm trying my best to accurately describe the
equipment and what I'm trying to do. Hope someone can help given the
specified equipment, since the search answers I've come up with are
specific to other people's equipment or too generic. Thanks.

<cl999@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1187823392.321341.197690@l22g2000prc.googlegr oups.com...
>I have 1 cable internet connection to my house hooked up to a wireless
> router on the main floor. Due to walls/floors/distance, I need to add
> an additional wireless router to the basement and run Ethernet to 1
> desktop. The devices involved are US Robotics 5461 and Trendnet
> TEW-452BRP. I'd like the USR to be in the basement since it has a
> built-in print server and the printer is needed in the basement. The
> USR has Bridging and WDS capabilities. The Trendnet has an "AP mode."
> I've tried different setting combinations, but none would allow me to
> access the internet from the basement. Essentially I just want the WAP
> in the basement to act as a repeater I guess. I know the terms bridge,
> router, repeater, AP all have very technical meanings applying to
> different hardware levels, which most laymen are not familiar with
> (including me), but I'm trying my best to accurately describe the
> equipment and what I'm trying to do. Hope someone can help given the
> specified equipment, since the search answers I've come up with are
> specific to other people's equipment or too generic. Thanks.
>
Here is a rather 'un-technical' response.

I have the cable modem and a d-link router in the basement. address is
....0.1 Office computer (xp)and file/print server (linux) are plugged into
it. RJ45 runs upstairs, there is a hub at the desk for the tower there, and
a linksys wireless set up as an access point. This unit is treated as a hub
itself - uplink cable goes into one of the 4 'yellow' sockets, not the wan
uplink socket. So, it is a hub that happens to be wireless, address is
......0.2, dhcp etc turned off.
I was seting up a second wireless unit (trendnet) in the basement. It
configured itself as ...1.1, and wanted the uplink plugged into the wan
socket. It just needed a different ssid, and to be on a different channel.
Having it as 1.1 instead of 0.3 insulated it from the file server, what was
either very good or very bad, depending on how you look at it.

But, I found that a better quality antenna upstairs gave me just as good a
signal downstairs as the separate access point.

As I see it, what you want is a second access point. A bridge would be
useful if you had a good signal downstairs and could not run wires. Seems
you have the opposite situation.

If you can run the wire, just put a hub in the basement, and plug the
computer and print server into the hub. Seems to me you don't need wireless
downstairs, but it is nice when a laptop comes to visit, so may be worth
doing.

Stuart