
		Receiving a Wireless Signal to Power Your Network

Powering your Network From Your Neighbor's Wireless Network

UNDER PROGRESS

This was a response to an email I received. I'll try to clean it up soon. But for now, I'll just stick it out here for reference.

Yes, you can bridge. I did it. But it's not simple and it can be confusing. The manufacturer didn't list that as an option and the tech' guys that I called thought that it could not be done. But I did it with a DLink ethernet to wireless bridge. Once that is done, you can pipe it into your wireless hub (as if the signal were from cable TV) and rebroadcast from your wireless hub and to your roomates.

If you run into trouble, remember that I had to reset my units FREQUENTLY. The cheap junk we typically have access to often seems to require it. So if your units aren't reacting as you expect, first try unplugging, then plugging in again. Then try reset, reconnect to the cable, set it up again. I hope you get it faster than I did. :-)

Concerning the distance... I'm not sure. What's likely more important is the walls and objects in the way. If you have nothing except two windows (or two non-thick and non-masonry walls), you should have a good chance of receiving the signal.

Note: going STRAIGHT through a wall is much better than going through at an angle. The angle makes the wall much thicker and stops more of the signal.

Here's what I had to do...
Important concept: Your bridge's antenna side will be part of your neighbor's network. The cable side of your bridge and the WAN side of your wireless router/hub will be a second logical network. The LAN side of your wireless router/hub will be a third logical network. So each of these three networks should have a different "network" portion of their IP numbers. That is, the first three numbers should not match. So, if your neighbor's wireless network starts with 192.168.0 then you could have your "bridge to WAN port" network could start with 192.168.2 and the network at your wireless router/hub's LAN side could start with 192.168.1. This differentiation allows good flow of network traffic. If your LAN sees a request for 12.192.34.10 (I made one up) it will know that it must find another network other than yours and it will look for the gateway... the first gateway will be your WAN port... then your neighbor's wireless router/hub

So to summarize the IP settings from your router back to your neighbor's router:
YOUR ROUTER
LAN SIDE IP: 192.168.1.1
GATEWAY: 192.168.2.30

YOUR BRIDGE
ETHERNET PORT SIDE IP: 192.168.2.30
GATEWAY: <INSERT the IP from the LAN side of your neighbor's router.. Maybe: 192.168.0.1>

YOUR NEIGHBOR's WIRELESS ROUTER
They set this: MAYBE the IP will be 192.168.0.1, but you must find out
GATEWAY: unimportant to you... it will point to their cable/DSL provider's gateway

NOTE: To set the bridge up, you must connect the bridge to your computer's cabled port and use your web browser to connect. Once it has the settings you want, then you change the configuration as described below.

The target configuration is the antenna of the bridge receives your neighbors signal. Then you use an ethernet cable to connect your ethernet bridge to the WAN port of your wireless router/hub. The IP number at the bridge's antenna is set by your neighbor's router because that half of your bridge is part of his/her network. (I'm assuming that your neighbor has DHCP turned on so his connecting machines can "automatically assign an IP" in the TCP settings). The CABLE side of the bridge is a different logical network and you will make that a static IP. Let's assume 192.168.2.30 (the default for my Dlink bridge on the cable side was 192.168.1.30 but you cannot let the first three numbers be the same as the LAN side of your wireless router/hub, and my wireless router used 192.168.1.1 so I changed the third number from 1 to 2 in the bridge). Be sure to set the gateway address to be your neighbor's wireless router/hub so your traffic for unknown IP numbers flows that direction.

Now you connect to your wireless router or hub USING AN ETHERNET CABLE at least for the first time, and set the WAN side to use a STATIC IP, and set the IP to something like 192.168.2.1. The first three numbers (192.168.2) represent the network you're on and coincide with the standard mask that you'll use (255.255.255.0). This allows your wireless router to recognize IP numbers that are not on your network. Any requests with different numbers in the first three parts will be sent to the gateway (first your bridge, then the bridge will do the same and send it to your friend's wireless router).

So to summarize the "network" between the bridge and wireless router, it might use 192.168.2.30 for the bridge and 192.168.2.1 for the WAN side of the wireless router. This makes up a small, 2 connection network with a network portion of 192.168.2 and two devices numbered 30 and 1.

The rest of your wireless router (the LAN side) will be normal. You'll use DHCP to automatically assign IP's and the router will likely be some IP address like 192.168.1.1 so you can connect using a browser.

I hope that helps. I know it's a bit complex. It took me a while to figure all that out.

Mark