Hey guys. As far as I know, the new firmware from DD-WRT removes the option as repeater from the settings and calls it the WDS Station.
Here I was trying to configure this thing as a repeater but wouldn't accept the normal setup. It just kept connecting and disconnecting. Also, I'd like to mention that the router I was using was that of Huawei, so maybe it wasn't compatible with Buffalo or something. I don't know. TRY THESE STEPS ONLY IF EVERYTHING ELSE YOU HAVE TRIED FAILED.
So here's what I did.
1) First the router. Get it's IP address. This should be easy. If you are connected to the router through LAN or WIFI, just to command prompt (Press Ctrl and R and type cmd). In the command prompt type ipconfig. That should give you the IP address of your pc and other stuff. Look for default gateway. If you are connected directly to your router through LAN or Wifi, the default gateway is your router and that should be your router's address. In my case it was 192.168.100.1
2) Now that we know the router address, let's go the Buffalo Router WHR-HP-G300N and see what's happening here. Reset the device first (if you have played with it in the past). There's a small reset button under the device, hold it for few seconds till the "Diag" lights up.
3) Wait for sometime and then connect the device via the ethernet cable to your pc. Remember to connected it to the LAN port and not the WAN port. The WAN port here is the port that's blue in color. Plug it into any of the 4 LAN ports.
4) Wait for a few minutes while the LAN icon in your system tray stops turning and shows an exclamation mark (since there is no internet). Also make sure your wifi is switched off. Now open a browser and Type 192.168.11.1 in the address bar. If you have folowed everything till now, it should open a admin page and asking for username and password and confirm password. Go Ahead and key in the username and password of your choice.
5) Now don't go through the auto setup. Go directly to the Basic Settings. Make sure the Buffalo ROUTER switch on the router is set to ON. Now set the WAN Connection to DHCP. Give the router a name if you want. Go down and click SAVE. (Do not press Apply all settings now - Keep it for later since it requires modem restart).
6) Router IP address: Here, leave the IP address of the router as 192.168.11.1 unless your main internet router's IP is in that range. In my case, my main router's IP is 192.168.100.1 and it wouldn't conflict with this at all. Just make sure the subnet (second last number) is different. 11 and 100 are evidently different in this case.
7) Subnet Mask will be 255.255.255.0 as it comes when clicked. Proceed to enter the Gateway as 192.168.100.1 (this is the main internet router IP) and also enter the DNS as 192.168.100.1.
8) Now click on Save (Not Apply all settings)
9) Go down, let the DHCP be on. It will show the IP as 192.168.11. ___ You can key in the any number except for 1 which is already your buffalo router address. DHCP users is 50 by default, leave it as is. This means the IP addresses for your devices will range from 192.168.11.100 to 192.168.11.149.
10) Let me explain. A lot of posts before and logic would have told you to continue setting this up as DHCP forwarder so that the main internet router only handles the routing process and is the only one assigning IP addresses. However, I tried this several times and it did not work, even if DHCP forwarding was allowed on the main internet router. For some reason the main internet router was not able to provide IP's to the devices that connected via the buffalo repeater. This was maybe coz of some compatibility issue or something. So I did some background work and found this setting to work, which is, to allow the DHCP of the buffalo router to run. So that the buffalo router would automatically be able to assign IP addresses to the devices that connected to it. The only thing to be taken care of is that the subnet is different, so that each modem is free to give it's own IP's and never conflict.
11) Ok. Now that we are done here, click on SAVE. Then click on the wireless tab. Here, in Physical connection select the connection mode as WDS Station (Wireless Distribution Station) and set the SSID to be the same as that of the main internet router. (Suppose your wifi name was IronMan, put the same name here in SSID). :)
12) If you don't find a virtual network setting below this, click on Add. Otherwise select WDS AP below and enter the same SSID there too. Click SAVE.
14) Proceed to the next tab as Wireless Security. Go ahead with entering the password. Let the security be as TKIP+AES for the physical. Enter the same password as you do for the main internet router. Do the same thing for the Virtual, use AES for it and the same password.
15) Let me explain about the physical. Here the physical is about connected to the main internet router and the virtual is the configuration for the devices that connect to it.
16) Now click "Apply all settings"
17) Wait for the modem to boot. And connect your device to the buffalo router. This should now be showing as the same wifi name as your main internet router. The only thing is if you see the IP addresses, you will find that the one's connected to the Buffalo router are using the IP 192.168.11.100 and so on... While the devices connected to the main internet router is 192.168.100.2 and so on. (based on my examples here).
18) When you walk out of the range of one, your device will automatically connect to this router and likewise.
If you get the DHCP forwarding of the modem working, then you can use that so that there is only one set of IP's. But like I said, some devices are not compatible with the buffalo router or vice versa. In such cases, do what I have explained here. You can at least get the connectivity running and have a single wifi connection around the house.
Good luck! :) And don't forget to post success stories, ideas that I have missed, suggestions, complaints or advice. Anything! Thanks for reading! :)
