Networks Wireless Bridge or Wireless Access Point?

I currently have a wireless network in my home. All devices are connected wirelessly to my Netgear DG834GT ADSL router, which at this stage is just fine.

I'm going to be shortly adding a NAS device in my office, where mine and my girlfriend's PCs are located. I don't want my NAS to be connected wirelessly, because of wireless bandwidth restrictions. As a result of this, I'll also be taking all of the PCs off the wireless loop, and be connecting them locally to an ethernet switch - just so happens that it helps with a few of my Linux wireless woes in the process. I thought to myself "aha, I need a wireless access point", but after looking into it, I'm not so sure. An access point appears to be the reverse of what I want The (very crude) topology would look something like this:

Wireless ADSL Router <- wireless -> What device lives here? <- gigabit ethernet -> NAS, PC1, PC2, PC3, Xbox, etc.

My question is: what is the actual device that I need to be getting? The device needs to have quite a few ethernet ports on it (half a dozen or so), preferably gigabit ethernet, but 100mb would be OK.

I feel like I'm being a complete mongoloid here, and I'm sure I'm just getting my terminology confused.

Thanks in advance

 

One of these, methinks

 

You want a wireless bridge. I would recommend getting yourself a Linksys WRT54GL and installing OpenWRT to bridge the wireless and ethernet interfaces, that is what I do.

 

That's what the Buffalo Wireless Ethernet Converter does that I linked to, out of the box. It's a great piece of kit.

 

I agree with Fophillips, get the WRT54GL and install either OpenWRT or DDWRT, and set it up as a wireless bridge. The WRT54GL is so cheap that i don't see much point in buying a device that's just designed to be a bridge. The GL is much more versatile if you ever need it to do more, or need it for a different application.

 

Cool, thanks guys.

The WRT54GL is something that I looked at in the past, purely because of the open source software that can be run on it. Wasn't aware that OpenWRT could handle bridging.

Question though - how well would this work with my current kit? I'm hoping that I can just configure it to connect and acquire from my Netgear router, and just plug the various devices into the ethernet ports, for ultimate amounts of win. Sounds likely?

Thanks again chaps.

 

I haven't personally used OpenWRT, I'm a DD-WRT guy. With my experiences you won't have a problem connecting to a wireless network and using the Ethernet ports as a bridge with any access point. You can even assign the Wan port of the router to the lan switch aswell, so you would have 5 Ethernet ports bridged to your wireless network.

But you realize that network usage over the wireless to your wired devices would be limited to your wireless speed. The WRT54GL is also only a 100mbit switch. If you want gigabit on that side of your network you either get a gigabit switch that you would wire to the WRT54GL, or you could buy a DD-WRT supported router that has a gigabit switch. Say, the WRT350N for example.

 

Which is why I'm looking to do it this way - so that traffic to and from the NAS and the desktop PCs doesn't go near the wireless connection as they are all physically connected to the same switch / router

Thanks indeed for all your very helpful advice