Wireless violence....

Last week I received all the gear to enable my home  telephone and Internet connection (InternetPlusBellen) via KPN, a Dutch Telecom Provider. Because I have my desktop and wireless printer located on the upper floor and use my laptop throughout the whole house, I wanted to create a wireless network using the KPN Experia box, which is also a wireless access point, and my own wireless router (Asus WL500g). The only thing I knew was that it should be possible to link those two devices together. After some browsing through the settings of both devices I discovered that WDS was the way to go (Wiress Distribution System). But….I couldn't get it to work. Also a Google session searching for problems related to my wl500g and the Experia box didn't produce a solution. After a long, resultless evening, I decided to give up for that day and to have some sleep..:) The day after I googled on WDS specifically. I should have done that earlier 🙂
Both on the wl500g and the KPN box WPA-PSK encryption was enabled (by default), but it turns out that WDS can not be used in combination with WPA-PSK. WPA-PSK encrypts all MAC-addressess while WDS needs the MAC-addresses to communicate! So, if you ever should want to link wireless devices together using WDS use WEP encryption and not WPA-PSK.

Hope this helps!