www.wifithoughts.com

[Hans]

Thank you for reading this.
For my brother I am setting up wireless internet for his campsite.
We already have a Linksys WRT54GL router running with OpenWRT firmware and UseMyNet hotspot portal, but the wireless signal is not covering the entire campsite.

UseMyNet requires a WDS repeating solution, so that MAC addresses of connecting clients are passed to the Linksys router.

Now my questions:
1)
The EnGenius EOC 2610 Outdoor Unit is (according to keenansystems) not a Universal Wireless Repeater, but does anyone have experience with using the EOC 2610 in WDS mode connecting to a Linksys WRT54GL or in other words is there evidence that this works (or not)?

2)
If the EnGenius EOC 2610 can not be used, can anyone confirm that I can safely buy an EnGenius ECB-3220 or ECB-3500 who ARE (according to keenansystems) Universal Wireless Repeaters?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[JKewish]

I don't have a direct answer for your questions but I can tell you that we've had a lot of trouble in the past using Linksys equipment in WDS mode with other manufacturer's hardware. Linksys equipment will work great in WDS with specific Linksys Bridges & Access Points like the WET54G and WAP54G. If you look at the WDS screen, it will list the access points it expects to connect to. Since you are using OpenWRT, you might have different results. The Linksys equipment lacks weatherproofing and is incredibly underpowered when compared to EnGenius.

We completely replaced our routers with EnGenius since Jeff has such a great price on them. Setup was super simple for a small cabin campsite installation using the EOC-2610 back-to-back as WDS & Bridge units.

Jeff advises to use the 1221 routers over the 9750 series mostly due to their transmit power. I don't use the router for WiFi broadcast since we have 2610's installed. I prefer the extra ram (32MB) & faster processor in the ESR-9752 now that the 9750 is no longer in production.

The problems we've always had in the past were directly related to how well the router handled traffic during peak use. Moving away from higher end routers has been a huge cost savings for us. I'll need a few more months on these EnGenius routers before I can comment on their performance.

We are about to deploy another 40 EOC-2610s at another property. I'm hoping it goes as smoothly as our first conversion to EnGenius hardware.

[Hans]

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. I appreciate it.
The main reason for using the Linksys was that it runs commercial Hotspot functionality (UseMyNet) which I expected to be easier to set up than open source stuff. This is true as the hotspot is working properly and the set up was not too difficult.
In the meantime we have bought a Linksys Range Expander, and the range of the wireless signal has increased with this, but could still be better.

If I had to do this over I would have tried to get it working with EnGenius hardware running a hotspot.
Do you have experience with setting this up on an EnGenius device with for example DD-WRT or other alternative firmware with a hotspot function as we could still sell the Linksys router and expander second hand and buy something of EnGenius.

[tamuin]