What a hassle this project was. I just bought two of the new 802.11g signal extenders from Linksys, but they dont work out of the box. In fact, with what I went through, Im not sure they would work at "all".

For security reasons, my wireless networks :

• are WEP encrypted
• dont use the default linksys channel 6 for communication
• dont use the default 192.168 network

These three items turned out to be the main bulk of the problem. However, the first thing I had to do was to upgrade the firmware on my brand new 802.11g access point (Linksys WAP54g) that came with the two extenders. The minimum version of firmware needed on the access point is listed as 2.07, but mine just came with 2.06. So after doing that, I continued on trying to use Linksys' default setup program .... in vain I might add.

Eventually, after googling for a while, visiting the linksys site, and emailing support, I got frustrated ... and smarter somehow. After trying to get this working for almost 2 hours, the default SSID of the WRE54g (wireless range extender) was burned in my head. Its "linksysRf1077c" by default - at least on the first one I was setting up. That was the critical piece for me. So here's how I did it.

After reading through the near useless user guide that comes with the WRE54g, I saw one screen-snapshot where upon completion, the address assigned was 192.168.1.240. Since almost all of the linksys products have web front end interfaces to thier products, I often find them MUCH better than the crappy gui ones they supply on cd's. Plus, who wants to be installing these things on laptops, desktops, etc - all just to find out that when you need to reset some setting, the pc you installed the software on is over at your girlfriends house .... argghhh. So its web based or bust.

Im using an IBM T21 laptop with Windows 2000 on it. I use the Linksys Wireless card that works with both A and G networks in my laptop (wac55ag I think). I also ALWAYS have a copy of KNOPPIX (linux on cd) for just such an occasion but wont get into that too much here now.

I created THREE new profiles on my wireless card :

1. wre54g-def - configured for 192.168.1.99 address, no encryption, SSID of "linksysRf1077c" (case is important)
2. wre54g-192enc - configured for 192.168.1.99 address, WEP key of my network, SSID of "linksysRf1077c" (case is important)
3. wre54g - this was the final version - my address, my WEP key, my SSID

So what I had to do was to use the "wre54g-def" profile to connect directly to the WRE54g. Then since we were both on the same network, I brought up Mozilla to the 192.168.1.245 address and began configuring some settings - but you cant do all of them. THe way linksys has the site configured, you cant change the key on the encryption WITH the rest of the settings - its a seperate save/confirm setting.

So after getting on the website, I changed the password (to let me know I am configuring my own device) and to prevent any random passer by on my very busy local neighborhood from F'ing with it. After saving that change, and confirming it worked (by refreshing the browser which now forced the new password for authentication) I continued on. Its important that these steps are followed exactly the same if you have the same situation as me - otherwise, it AINT gonna work ....

Ok, so now that was done, its time to set the key up. WITHOUT changing the IP address or the SSID, go into the encryption setting, and a popup screen will appear. Choose the 10 character 64 bit key, and I set it up for my networks key. When that popup screen that allowed me to change the setting dissappears after the "save settings" operation, connectivity will be lost to the browser, because the wireless session is now different. This is where new profile number two came in.

So using the Linksys wireless card profile manager, choose new profile number two - "wre54g-192enc" which is to encrypt the traffic over the 192 network. That is the session we now need to move further. At that point, I refreshed the browser again without making any other changes in it, and I was reprompted for my password. That was all good and worked "as desired". So now for the final set of changes. I reset the IP on the WRE54g to the settings for my network (my IP and gateway), and set the SSID and channel to my networks settings.

Before saving at this screen, its the last chance to confirm that the IP is correct, the channel is correct, and everyting on this screen looks right. You can NOT change the WEP key if desired because that will kill the controlling session again. So after confirming all that, and clicking save, its time to go to the new profile number three - "wre54g". This final profile was for my network, my key, my SSID and all - and it worked properly.

Last but not least was to configure the MAC address of the wireless access point that I wanted to repeat. I put my new wireless G access points mac in there, and all of a sudden, like magic, the activity lights on the WRE54g and the WAP54g started flashing rapidly, showing that there was some good communication between them.

Special notes :

• if the "link" light on the WRE54g is red, things are not working. That wasnt clear to me at the time, but after getting it working properly, the light is now a nice electric blue color and flashes the activity button.
• if anything goes wrong in the process of doing all this stuff as it did for me, I had to reset the WRE54g by holding the reset button in for 10 seconds. I got to notice that after the link light went from red to blue and back to red again, and then blue again, it was fully reset. I would then start all over from the beginning.
• when all was said-and-done and over, I never did end up using the setup utility for anything after all. I was so annoyed with it anyway, that I couldnt tolerate getting that message again, that it couldnt find any WRE54g's on my network.