Router or Access Point?

In company where I work we do wireless Broadband on country side. As we know many people buy new computers which are mostly laptops and they always to surprise that they can’t use Broadband in every room in house. Because our answer and rule was that we supply your Broadband on the end of cable. So you just plugged in and getting automated without any necessary action.

Problems comes when people want to do it them self, or someone else do it for them and install with default settings. Sometimes it makes IP conflicts with our CPE, when using Router we have WAN port and LAN (usually 4 ports ).
LINKSYS WRT54GL Wireless-G Broadband Router is mostly used and has a default IP 192.168.1.1 on LAN side, so this same like our Client Radio Receiver.

What was happen? When customer plug cable to WAN port our box give IP from 192.168.1.0/24 range, router got IP 192.168.1.100 on WAN and on LAN 192.168.1.1 and that works sometimes, but never right and connection freeze. After many problems with access to our box to change settings from customer side (usually log-in to Router options), we start using a rule what change Router to Access Point.

How we change? Force to put our cable to LAN port ( one of four, doesn’t matter which one ), setup IP 192.168.1.2 (LAN) and turn off DHCP server on Router to make works like bridge ( Access Point ) . This solution have feet of clay, customers put cable to WAN port and couldn’t get IP (Limited or not connectivity)

Office got more problems every day with client Routers, customer often complain that service is down and they can’t use even when connection from our side was fine. As well people who install Routers sometimes charge more than 150 euro, not always setup encryption and many times left default SSID. Worse is that they didn’t left any details (password, phone number, etc.)

Finally ours managers decided to go with wireless and change golden rule (Broadband on the end of cable). Based-on previous experience with Routers we figured simple solution:

• No Routers, just simple Access Point
• Customers must have easy access to password and name of home network
• Engineer must know that we supply AP and has access from Office

EDIMAX EW-7206APG Wireless LAN Access Point is device what we using, as well model Ew-7209apg what has 5 port switch build-in ( You can connect more devices, instead 1 port )

Access Point Settings: IP address: 192.168.1.2 * Mask:255.255.255.0 * Gateway: 192.168.1.1 (Encrypted WPA)

CPE Settings ( Receiver ): IP address 192.168.1.1, normally log-in by WWW on port 80 to manage radio. We create forwarding rule that if you access CPE on port 81 then log-in to AccessPoint.

Customer if forgot a password, can easy check on Access Point and Box from device. Every time we supply wireless, all notes are in data base customer.

Created by @BBireland

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