Question Need a Wifi to Ethernet Solution

[Crag_Hack]

Hey guys I have a wifi signal in a building I need to convert to ethernet to segregate a wifi network from its parent/source wifi network. The easiest way would be by hardwiring the existing router that manages the downstream network to a device that connects to the parent wifi network. Unfortunately there is no ethernet connection to the parent network. Currently the existing router in the downstream network is connected to a private Comcast connection. I already tried a Netgear EAX15 wifi range extender and unfortunately it wouldn't connect to the parent wifi network. Are there any other solutions out there worth trying? I'm reluctant to try another wifi extender since the one I tried failed miserably. Thanks!

 

[dwd999]

In past years Netgear used to offer their NETGEAR Universal N600 Dual Band Wi-Fi to Ethernet Adapter (WNCE3001) but those days are gone. You might be able to get one from a used source but there's no guarantee that it would work or provide the level of service that you would want. Those days are just gone.

Nowadays a wifi extender with an ethernet port might be your only alternative. But since you had one extender fail it would be a gamble.

 

[BFG-9000]

Many older extenders/repeaters did allow you to set them up as a wireless client, which would convert the wifi into a single ethernet port. Unless this also toggled on a DHCP server (in which case the wifi radio would be treated as the WAN port), this would only work for one device at a time even if an ethernet switch were attached to the single port, generally only providing internet for the first attached device to be powered on. With a DHCP server this would put it into double-NAT and usually only work with IPv4 and not IPv6 for all attached devices.

Given all the ways it could be set up wrong to cause support issues and the no-IPv6 limitation in an age when over 40% of internet traffic is now IPv6, it is no surprise that modern extenders typically omit this capability. Your EAX15 can only be set to extender/repeater mode or wireless access point mode (which is all its ethernet port is for) and not a client.

If you have an old wireless router laying around, FreshTomato's Wireless Client Mode and DD-WRT's Station Mode will do this double-NAT thing for you and even give you 4-5 ethernet ports since routers include a switch. DD-WRT also offers Station Bridge and Repeater Bridge modes where both routers share the same MAC address on the same subnet, but those use WDS for IPv6 capability which can only be implemented as an ugly VLAN hack on Broadcom devices which turns out to be pretty unstable. Likewise, the FreshTomato wiki suggests WDS has not been recommended since 2022. I don't know if you'd have better luck with an Atheros/Qualcomm or MediaTek powered device but while their drivers probably don't require this workaround, I did attempt this on an old ath9k router running OpenWRT and it would also only work in double-NAT.

 

[bill001g]

Your problem is likely related to WDS.

There is a fundamental security restriction in wifi to prevent man in the middle attacks and other attacks. This requires the mac address to be used as part of the encryption keys. This only allows a single device to be connect on each wifi connection. Good for security but makes it impossible to do things like you want.

WDS is field defined in wifi but was not really used. A bunch of equipment manufactures decided to use this field to pass the mac address of other traffic. It never has been made part of any official wifi standard. It has been done for so long that most companies have managed to make their implementation compatible.

WDS used this way is considered a security exposure. Many routers have this disabled or restricted by default. Generally you must have control of the main router to use WDS.

There are a couple other "solutions/hacks" to the mac encryption restriction. TPLINK and likely a number of other manufactures have what is they call universal repeater mode. Even though it is called universal repeater mode the actual implementation can be different.

What is done is they use some kind of NAT solution. Some actually run the wifi as the WAN port of the router. Others, tplink I am pretty sure, uses a proprietary kind of NAT but done on mac addresses rather than IP. This solves the dual nat issue.

Maybe look for a router/extender than has options other than WDS. You techncally should not be doing this anyway if you do not own the main wifi network.

 

[Ralston18]

Two points:

1) "Currently the existing router in the downstream network is connected to a private Comcast connection.

2) "Maybe look for a router/extender than has options other than WDS. You techncally should not be doing this anyway if you do not own the main wifi network."
[My underlines.]

[Note #2 per @bill001g and I agree.]

You need to work with the owner of that private Comcast connection.

Closing thread to further posts.