Network setup (WDS) Need guidance.

I want to setup my network a little differently in the house but I dont know what will work hardware wise and I am wondering if someone could give me a little information. And would like to do this spending the least amount of money possible.

Here is what I have:

Cable modem going to DI-524 router (does not support WDS). Attached directly is a computer and an xbox.
Wirelessly off that I have 5 laptops (3 macs, 2 pcs), 1 desktop (USB adapter) and Airport Extreme for streaming music.

I want to have the second xbox upstairs wireless just as a media center, and probably the cheapest way is to use a WDS compliant router

Here is what I have for HARDWARE right now:
1. DI-524 (does not support WDS)
2. Linksys 802.11b 4 port router (pretty much useless, does not support WDS)
3. Airport Extreme (I THINK it supports WDS, but does the main router also need to as well?)
4. I can pick up a Linksys WRT54GC (compact one) for $30
5. I can pick up a Linksys 802.11g (WRT) for $54 (and that support WDS for sure)

I can't figure out what the best way to do this is. I would still like to have the Airport Extreme just streaming music because it is in another room with only a stereo. The Dlink isnt all that great - wireless range sucks, so I am easily willing to scrap that.
Can I use 2 of the compact linksys routers (one as the main, the other as the client for the xbox) or do those not support WDS??

Another problem is that the main router is in the basement (needs to be), and the signal upstairs where the second xbox will be is strong, but SLOW.
As well, another option that I am willing to undertake is having one network for the computer downstairs, the wired xbox, and the wireless PC's, and another just for music and the xbox upstairs.

As a rule of thumb I normally suggest to avoid using routers as wireless clients; most of them do not support it anyway. The good news is the WRT54G makes an exception to this rule with third party firmware installed. I have found DD-WRT works very well when configuring one of these in client mode, and it also means your main access point (or router) does not need to support WDS.

Unfortunately the WRT54GC is based on totally different hardware and does not support modified firmware, although it should make a good replacement for the D-Link.

Is your Airport Extreme is configured as a wireless client for the stereo? If that is working then there's probably no need to change it.

With regards to the range issue, if the signal is good from upstairs but access is slow then I'd suspect either the device you used reported its reception incorrectly (sadly not uncommon!) or there is some interference, perhaps from a cordless phone or neigbours WLAN. Changing the channel of the main access point/router may help if the latter is the case.

__________________
Jeremy

Marlborough WiFi Project

I realize this is an old thread, but in case anybody else (like me) comes across this thread while trying to do something similar -- after trying a similar setup with client mode to allow my media center devices (xbox, satellite box, etc) to plug into a local wireless router which then relayed traffic to my main internet connected wireless router, I found that I could not get traffic to properly get routed between the two networks -- for instance, while my xbox could happily communicate with the outside internet, it could not talk to my home PC which was hanging off my main wireless router. I'm no expert but after reading up on this for a while I came to the conclusion this may be by design, and could not resolve it using client mode.

Instead, I flashed both of my routers (both Linksys WRT54G's, one a v6 and one a v8) with appropriate versions of the DD-WRT firmware (took 5-10 minutes per device) and then configured WDS following the WDS page instructions on the DD-WRT wiki. This worked like a charm and took very little effort. Client mode has its advantages, but if you run into issues routing traffic between your two networks you may find WDS to be a better fit. The main drawback is that it does require both devices to support WDS, and many do not. I found DD-WRT to be very easy to install and configure for this though.