TCPIP Bridging LAN via Win7 to DSL Router

[greg.cartagena]

I'm trying to use Win 7 Network Bridging to make a laptop into a WIFI Repeater, and am running into issues I don't understand and am hoping to reach someone knowledgeable on the subject who can enlighten me...

I'm in a mobile home park where the owner provides a WIFI Internet connection, but I am so far away from the antenna that I can't get enough signal to connect any phones while inside the metal hull.

My attempted solution was to setup a laptop to be a soft of WIFI Repeater, so I have a NetGear USB WIFI Adapter that I put on a long extension cord and routed the device out a ceiling vent and onto the roof as high as possible, and outside and above the metal hull of the RV.

Doing this I get sufficient signal strength to connect to his WIFI Router on the 5 GHz Band. Now I also have a GTE Actiontec DSL Modem which I am using as an Ethernet Hub with Wireless access that is inside the RV. I ran an Ethernet Cable from the LAN port of the laptop to PORT 1 on the router / hub. It was much easier than I expected to get everything to work, I simply setup the DHCP Server on the Router to assign IPs in a subnet of 192.168.138.1 with a mask 255.255.255.0, and reserved a static address for the Laptop LAN adapter at 192.168.138.2

Now the Laptop's NetGear WIFI adapter is assigned an address by the Owner's Router which is at 192.168.10.1

With everything setup like this, all I had to do was select both the WIFI and LAN adapters on the laptop, and select the BRIDGE Menu Option, and suddenly all kinds of magic happened, and resulted in a mix of things that have both Pros and Cons.

It seems that by having the laptop set to BRIDGE mode, that anything connected to the Router, weather its plugged into another Ethernet LAN Port or weather it connects through the WIFI SSID which I named "Actiontec", that these clients are being assigned IP Addresses (not by the router they're plugged into), but instead by the Router with the Internet Connection across the park!

This I found to be absolutely BEAUTIFUL, because it achieved my objective so easily and seamlessly, but of course there is also a minor problem, and I want to understand the details of this a much as possible, hoping someone with enough in depth knowledge of TCPIP will answer and explain:

QUESTIONS I HAVE ARE:

1. I found that if I connect another Windows 7 Box to my Router, weather by plugging into another Ethernet port or by connecting with Wireless Access, that the Windows Box is seamlessly assigned an IP Address on the Owner's Subnet and so it has Internet Access, and with quite a significant bandwidth, but if I use a phone to connect to my Router via the Actiontec SSID I seem to have mixed results. My iPhone 5 authenticates and gets an IP assigned by my Router (192.168.138.x) and with this it is unable to see the network with the Gateway it is bridged to (192.168.10.1). Why does the Win7 box get an IP assigned by the outside gateway, but the iPhone 5 doesn't seem to see the bridged network?

2. If I connect to the Router via the Actiontec SSID using my Motorola Android Moto X phone, it gets assigned an IP that's in the bridged network, seems like it's going to work, but the WIFI bars on the phone have an "!" Exclamation Mark beside them, and all attempts to get outside - past the Gateway fail. Why is this?

3. If I connect to the Router via the Actiontec SSID using my girlfriend's ZTE Samsung Android Phone, it gets assigned an IP by my Router's DHCP, in the 192.168.138.x subnet, and therefore it does not see the bridged network at all and is unable to get outside the gateway.

4. It appears that after enable the BRIDGE between the LAN and Wireless adapters on the laptop, that the LAN Ethernet Adapter on the laptop gets assigned an IP by the Gateway (192.168.10.1), and being such, I can no longer connect to my Router to Login as ADMIN and do administration tasks on the Router, because it's like the actual Static IP assigned to my Router (192.168.138.1) no longer exists to the laptop that its physically plugged into. Now if I unplug the Router from the Laptop with the BRIDGE connection, and plug another Windows box into an Ethernet port by itself, then I can connect to the Router at it's static IP Address 192.168.138.1. Question is, is there a way to administer the Router from the Win7 Laptop it was setup with, without undoing the BRIDGE Connection in Win 7? I thought that BRIDGING meant both subnets would be able to see each
other?

5, Is there any reference that is useful and explains in layman's terms all these complex things about TCPIP?

 

[bill001g]

So I will just say I only read about half of what you posted.

To use a laptop as repeater you want to use a feature called ICS internet connection sharing. There are many guides on microsoft on how to set it up.

Since the laptop is acting as the repeater it must assign the IP addresses not your router. The second router is only going to act as a AP.

A much simpler way to have done this rather than putting indoor equipment outside is to use equipment designed for this purpose. Both ubiquiti and engenious sell outdoor bridge equipment. The exact unit depend on the radio frequency being used by the park. Something like a nanostation loco m2 if you need to work on 2.4g. They have many models depending on what you actually need.

All you would do in the most simple case is run the ethernet cable coming from the outdoor unit and hook it to your router that you configured as a AP. Key is to disable the dhcp and let the park assign the IP. The nanostations if you really need the feature can also run as a router...similar to what ICS is doing on your PC. Hard to say if you want to run the device as a simple bridge or run it as a router you will have to experiment