Using a wireless access point on a controlled ethernet network

[Kobalt]

I'm living at school in an on-campus apartment and want to be able to connect my PS3 to the internet. There's a wireless network but it's WPA2 Enterprise, which the PS3 does not support. Ethernet would work but there are no jacks in the living room, and I would rather not have a 30 foot cable running around the apartment .

So what I wanted to do was use an old router (WRT54G Tomato) as a wireless access point to the ethernet network. In order to connect wired devices to the network you only need to register the MAC address and the device then gets an IP address automatically. So, my question is would this work? Could I connect the router to the wired network and then the PS3 to the router (thereby using the router as an access point)? Or will the PS3 not be able to obtain an IP address automatically?

Any other ideas?

[sjohnson]

I'm running an Xbox through a wired connection to a Linksys WRT54g setup as a WAP in my home network (WPA2/PSK) so I don't see why not. Though, I've hard-coded the IP address to simplify things on the Xbox side.

[ben0]

So you need a Wireless device that can act as a Wireless bridge, independently of what the other wireless device are set too or set the Wrt54 to Wireless Client mode. All the device does is bridge the wireless and wired interfaces together.

Once that is setup you should be able to use DHCP because the device is bridging the networks, just make sure the wrt wireless client isn't running dhcp and is not sharing the same internal address as your Access Point, it just may confuse things.

[noroger]

I know you're going to use tomato but here is some info about wireless bridges and how to set them up:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Bridge

Also, I don't know if you're going to make the network admins very happy though. What I would do is connect your laptop to the schools network and then share that connection through ethernet called "Internet Connection Sharing", more on that:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...ection-Sharing

[aythrea]

Oh man. I've been in this situation. And it isn't pretty. To be blunt, your best bet is to get a wireless router. This accomplishes 2 things: 1.) It allows you to control your encryption platform. And two, it masks the number of devices on your particular part of the network.

At the school I went to, we had another issue: Bluesocket. Which links your mac address to your username, so you couldn't be in two places at once. It was painful. At least with the router you could have however many devices as your internal subnet would allow.

tl;dr: Get a wireless router, save the headaches.

[Kobalt]

Thanks for the replies

So I connected the router to the wall and then my computer to the router (wired) and PS3 to the router (wireless) and everything works great. The only issue I'm having now is once the router connects to the wall it obtains its IP address and then I lose access to the configuration screen. Even if I put the router's IP address into the address bar it won't connect. Ping requests give back "Destination Host Unreachable." I'm guessing it has to do with how the network/firewall is setup here. Is there a way to telnet or SSH into the router? Even if I disconnect it from the campus network it keeps it's school IP address and I can't connect to it. The only way to connect to it is to reset the router to it's defaults.

My IP: 129.2.237.XXX
Router IP: 129.2.237.YYY
Subnet: 255.255.254.000 (both)
Default Gateway: 129.2.236.1

[Biznatch]

Turn DHCP on and plug the cable into the routers WAN port. This will enable NAT, and you should then be able to get to the routers settings. I think the routers config is still setup to listen on the 192.168.1.1 address. You could also try manually setting up your comp to 192.168.1.10 with the DNS and gateway set to 192.168.1.1 and then try to get to the config.