Airport Extreme as base, Tomato as wireless bridge--WPA2 not working?

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carl67lp

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 17, 2001
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I'm attempting to use my Linksys WRT54GL with Tomato 1.27 as a wireless bridge, with an Airport Extreme (MB053LL/A) as the main router. Following instructions at http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3810281 and configuring the Linksys as a wireless client, I can get things working just fine with no security enabled on the Airport Extreme.

However, as soon as I turn on WPA2 on the Airport Extreme, and setting the appropriate security entries on the Linksys, suddenly things go belly-up: the bridge no longer seems active.

I've tried, on the Linksys/Tomato side, various combinations of WPA2 and TKIP, TKIP/AES, and AES...and nothing seems to work. I'm quite certain that the password is the same, too.

Is this simply a mismatch of WPA2 versions or somesuch? Am I simply doomed to failure? I just bought the (used) Airport on Craigstlist; I'd hate to have to sell it right away and get something else, but I will if it's not going to work.

Any thoughts? Many thanks.
 
I haven't ever used tomato or an airport extreme, but I've had no problems using ddwrt on a wrt54gl as a wireless bridge. It might be worth a shot to try ddwrt instead of tomato and see if it works.
 
I actually re-flashed to DD-WRT and followed their wiki guide for bridging...and got so lost that I'm not quite sure I set it up right. However, that didn't seem to do anything. I'm willing to give it another go if you know of a step-by-step guide that doesn't suck!
 
Okay, I've grabbed my old Buffalo router (which also has Tomato 1.27 on it), so now I've got two 802.11g routers, and one 802.11n router.

Would I be better off setting the Airport Express as N-only, then hard-wiring one of the G routers onto it, then using that one as the "base" for the remote router? If so, what magical feats do I need to do to pull this off?
 
Quick update.

I plugged the WRT54GL into the Airport via the WRT's WAN port. I then plugged my iMac into the WRT, and was able to surf the Web just fine.

However, when I tried to bridge the Buffalo (as client) to the WRT (as Access Point) with WPA2, it failed. It occurred to me that although I've successfully bridged the Buffalo as a client to another router, I'd never done so with security in place--so I don't know if it's ever worked.

I saw something about doing a thorough wipe of the firmware settings in Tomato. I might give this a go tonight, but I'm doubtful it'll work.

At this point, am I doomed to having a 100-foot cable running through my house?
 
Well, proving that bullheaded stubbornness always wins out, I've succeeded. With the proper Googling, I found that, apparently, WPA2 is not supported under Tomato for routers acting as a wireless client (or, I presume, a wireless bridge--or anything other than an AP).

As much as I didn't want to, I flashed my WRT54GL with DD-WRT (I don't care for its interface nearly as much as Tomato), and followed this guide: http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3841751 I set the WRT54GL as a wireless bridge, figuring that I might as well let the Airport Extreme do all the heavy lifting.

After a while, lo and behold, things started falling into place, and everything seems peachy now.

Tomato, I love ya, but you failed me here. DD-WRT will stick around on the router for the foreseeable future.
 
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