[TriLUG] WRT54GL wireless bridge

[Jason White]

* Owen Berry (oberry at trilug.org) [061006 10:50]:
> I need to setup a wireless bridge in my home so that my myth box (still
> to be built) can connect to my wireless network. I was thinking that I'd
> get one of those WRT54GL's and put OpenWrt on it, and turn it into a
> bridge. Does that sound feasible? Any cheaper (and reliable)
> suggestions? It needs to be able to handle WPA.
> 
> Before anyone starts pushing for a wired connection, this is going to be
> located in my living room, which is nowhere near anything that could be
> used to wire it up. Also, it'll be running front and back myth on the
> same machine, so there's no need for a super fast connection.

Owen, I've been running a very similar setup for a couple years.  The
mythtv box in my living room connects to one of the wired ports on a
WRT54G (running openwrt), and the WRT54G is bridged wirelessly to
another WRT54G (running openwrt) upstairs in the "server room".  I'm
not using WPA yet, but I know others have it working.

The mythtv box is both a frontend and a backend, but I also have
frontends on other machines around the house, including my wireless
laptop.  All the frontends obviously have to talk wirelessly to the
backend in the living room, which usually works very well, except for
HD programs.  

HD content is just too much bandwidth over 802.11g, so I can't use the
normal mythtv frontend.  Instead, I downgrade and stream any HD stuff
with vlc on the mythtv backend, and play it on a client machine with
any normal video player (mplayer, vlc, xine, etc).  It's somewhat
kludgy to setup the stream, but I don't do it very often, and there is
a mythtv streaming plugin, which might make this easier, but I haven't
tried it yet.

Overall, it's a great setup, with a high Wife Approval Factor. ;-)
(Just get a nice universal remote (radio shack) and a cheap lirc
serial/usb device (ebay)).

Hope that helps,
Jason