setup RT-AC66U as WDS repeater

[Technicallyless]

Have two AC routers, one a RT-AC68P, the second, a RT-AC66U. Can I set the 66U as a WDS repeater? Also, one has "tomato" on it for VPN service. Does BOTH routers have to have "tomato" on them in order to utilize WDS?

 

[bill001g]

The one that has tomato can run as a repeater but you likely will have to turn the WDS feature on in the main router. Some routers have this enabled by default but WDS can be a security exposure in some cases so some routers disable it.

Unless you have no other option I would avoid any form of wireless repeater it greatly degrades you signals. Now with tomato you can use 1 radio to talk to the main router and the second radio to talk to the end machines which reduces some of the penalty of running a repeater. Since the rebroadcast signal is on a different radio/channel/ssid it tends to cause less issues.

 

[Technicallyless]

The one that has tomato can run as a repeater but you likely will have to turn the WDS feature on in the main router. Some routers have this enabled by default but WDS can be a security exposure in some cases so some routers disable it.

Unless you have no other option I would avoid any form of wireless repeater it greatly degrades you signals. Now with tomato you can use 1 radio to talk to the main router and the second radio to talk to the end machines which reduces some of the penalty of running a repeater. Since the rebroadcast signal is on a different radio/channel/ssid it tends to cause less issues.

 

[Technicallyless]

Thanks bill001g. Can you elaborate, or, know where I can find exactly how-to set this up properly? I just want to extend my wifi a bit further out past my patio area for a solid strong signal and reliability. Currently, I right at the spot where the signal drops off quite noticeably, within a matter of just a couple of steps. I was hoping the repeater/ extender setup using my old RT-AC66U would solve this. I don't wish to create more issues by not setting this up correctly.

 

[bill001g]

Tomato I am not real sure about but dd-wrt has a couple of examples on their site. In the simple repeater mode you pretty much just check a box and put in the SSID and passwords. Using one of the wireless radios as backhaul to the main router is a lot more tricky and you must edit the iptables entries manually. There is a example of the 2 radio setup someplace on dd-wrt but I can't find it for some reason.

Be aware placement of the repeater device is critical. It must be placed in a location that it gets very good signals from the main router but can still transmit to the remote location. Sometime this is very hard when the cause of the drop off is a wall where the optimum point is in the middle of the wall itself.

If you can run a ethernet cable part way it may also work and using the second router as a AP rather than repeater is much simpler to setip.