My family and I live on a 10 acre farm with 2 houses, the main house is approximately 3000 sq ft, the guest house is 1500 sq ft, we also have 6 - 20' x 100' greenhouses behind the main house. My wireless setup is as follows, main house has Exede Satellite Internet installed, modem is centrally located in the house with a WZR-600DHP router connected, in the guest house we have a WZR-300HP that is set up as a WDS Station with a virtual interface AP rebroadcasting the SSID, in the greenhouses I have a Linksys WRT54GS2 router set in "repeater bridge" mode. I have tested the signal on a cell phone connected to the WiFi and I can wander approximately half of the property and still have wireless internet connection, I am very happy with the wireless range from my setup, the trouble that I am experiencing with the setup is within the two Buffalo routers.
I followed the instructions that were provided with the WZR-300HP to set up the WDS AP and Station. Both AP's are on the same SSID, the WDS AP and WDS Station are on a separate SSID, both are being broadcasted. My Linksys WRT54GS2 is setup as a "repeater bridge" and has not had any trouble at all. The two buffalo routers however, have been having various issues i.e.., web-gui failing to load, excessively long ping times, DNS errors, etc. When these issues present themselves a reboot will resolve them for a day or two and then it starts all over again. When the web-gui fails, I am still able to ping the routers and reboot them remotely by using telnet. The issues did not present until I added the WZR-300HP onto the network, I have tried numerous times to update the firmware on the 300HP but I keep getting an error message "Error retrieving update information". I am getting tempted to load the BrainSlayer DD-WRT firmware to see if there is any better performance or the option for "repeater bridge" as that seems to work perfect as opposed to the WDS AP & Station setup. Before I do this and void the warranty, I wanted to check to see if anyone knew where I could get a copy of the original firmware from my router to go back to or if there is a way to make this one update to a newer version of the Buffalo firmware.
I am also open to suggestions to alternative setup options. My my current setup & requirements are as follows:
Main house: Exede Modem -> WZR-600DHP (192.168.11.1), AP SSID(id1), Virtual Interface WDS AP(id2) - only connects to wireless clients, no wired connections
Guest house: WZR-300HP (192.168.11.3), WDS Station SSID(id2), Virtual Interface AP(id1) - Connects to 2 wired clients and wireless clients.
Greenhouses: WRT54GS2 (192.168.11.2), Wireless Bridge SSID(id1), Virtual Interface AP(id1) - only connects to wireless clients no wired connections.