Six months ago I had to set up a Linksys Access Point (WAP54G) as a wireless repeater in my house, to get the wireless signal from my Wireless-G Broadband Router (WRT54G) to reach the attic. It was a painful process, and the main reason it was painful was trying to get the correct value on the repeater for the setting labelled “Remote Access Point’s LAN MAC Address”. This is how it knows where to send all the relayed traffic to.
How hard can this be? You go to your WRT54G router, click “Status”, and there it is: a field labelled “MAC Address”. Just copy that in, right? However, that’s the MAC address for the wired side. So, despite the fact that the field is labelled “LAN MAC address”, if you enter the MAC address the router uses on the LAN, nothing works! It’s not the “LAN MAC Address” at all – it’s precisely the other one, the MAC address from the Status/Wireless subtab. Doh! A “Breathtaking UI” award to Linksys, I think.
(This is a bit geeky, but I also want to document it to try and avoid anyone else having to suffer through this.)
I don’t mean to nitpick (and I’m really interested to see), but this would be much more informative with the screenshot of the offending UI. :)
I don’t mean to nitpick (and I’m really interested to see), but this would be much more informative with the screenshot of the offending UI. :)
Well, it’s just says:
MAC Address: 09 F9 …
:-) It’s a bit hard to show the foolishness without a live model.
Gerv
If you want a better UI for your WRT54G, have you looked into third-party firmware? I use Tomato and it’s quite sleek, IMO.