Ethernet point to wireless

firstborn

firstborn

firstborn

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
3,598
Location
Nottingham
A friend has bought a wireless access point to connect to an ethernet point in her room in the hope of giving her wireless access. At the moment it doesn't work and I'm popping round later to have a looky.

My first though is that the connection of such a device may be prevented by the service supplier - it's in a Uni hall of residence. Is it possible that this may be the case? If so any way around it?

Cheers
 
It is likely that they are restricting the MAC addresses allowed connectivity on the ports based on the machine that signed upto the service.

In my halls last year when you first tried to access the internet you were redirected to a signup page where you paid for your connection, the mac address of your machine was then recorded.

If thats the case and the access point supports it just try cloning her computers MAC onto the AP. I got around the system in my halls last year that way just using a cheap Linksys WRT54G.
 
If you just want to connect a single device it should be easy as you should be able to configure the access point as a transparent bridge, this will make no changes to the MACs etc. If you have several devices I guess you can clone MACs but a router would be simpler
 
rick827 said:
If you just want to connect a single device it should be easy as you should be able to configure the access point as a transparent bridge, this will make no changes to the MACs etc. If you have several devices I guess you can clone MACs but a router would be simpler
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That was my thinking on the way it should work with a single device i.e. as far as the network was concerned the laptop could still be be connected via a cable. Perhaps...?

Other than that, will try the cloning approach.
 
Right, I've had a look at this and the AP is a Belkin Universal Range Extender/AP.

I've configured it as an AP, set it's IP to what the laptop picked up when hard wired and it seemed to be working. Laptop pics up the Uni's registration page for new devices, so there is a connection. But it always goes back to that page as if the network it detecting a new device each time.

If that all makes sense anybody with any idea as to a solution. Would a different AP work?
 
I've had a quick browse through the manual for that AP and it does not look like it will support any kind of MAC address cloning, and as that appears to be the way the Uni are authenticating the devices attached to the network you're out of luck as far as I can see.

The best thing to do would be to take it back to where you bought it from and change it for a Cable router (NOT and ADSL one). Somthing such as a Linksys WRT54G would be more than adequate and are pretty cheap, has 4 Cat5 ports on it and a wireless AP built in. It also supports MAC address cloning on the WAN port so you could give it the MAC of the laptop that she registered with the Uni and then everything should be fine.
 
Cheers for that - forgot to add that the UNi also requires you download software that checks you have uptodate AV software etc. before allowing you onto the network - again didn't think would pose a problem if the link provided by the AP was transparent to the network.
 
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