Trying to Get My HD-DVR on-line.....

[cardiac]

I ordered a WRT54G to use with Tomato. I want it to extend my network to my Directv HD-DVR for use with On Demand movies. Is there a good tutorial for using Tomato to do this? (Kinda the noobs version) I'm ok with standard networking stuff, but this may be a little difficult...

I have a Netgear WPN824 Rangemax in my office that works flawlessly. Verizon DSL is the ISP. I have all 4 ethernet ports filled on it with 4 desktops in the office. We also have 2 laptops that use the wireless function and everything works fine. I want to get the HD-DVR on the Internet, and it is 2 rooms away; about 20 feet. I really don't want to run cable to it, hence the Linksys router and probably Tomato. Am I going about this the right way?


Bob

 

[cardiac]

No one wants to give out any advise?

 

[Wuzup101]

You shouldn't have any problems doing it with tomato from what I know. However, I've used DD-WRT on the same model (WRT54G) in the past (not tomato). Basically, all you should have to do is set the tomato router to client bridge mode, set the IP address to something outside your router's DHCP range, put in your wireless security settings / key, and connect the ethernet cable from the tomato router to the DVR.

Now here is the thing... I'm assuming that tomato has a "client bridge" mode... and I'm fairly certain it does... but I've never used it myself! All in all, it should be pretty easy to set up. I have 2 WRT54G routers doing this in the house (1 is actually serving a DVR).... both using dd-wrt.

Edit: You should be able to get the bandwidth you need to stream if your run is only 20 feet. If for some reason you have issues... and you still don't want to run cable... I would look into 200mbps powerline adapters. That being said, I used to stream netflix stuff across 2 DD-WRT powered WRT54G routers without any issues (using my 360 to play the media).

 

[cardiac]

Thanks a bunch for the reply. Why does the IP have to be set outside the DHCP's range?

Thanks,

Bob

 

[Wuzup101]

Because you need a static IP for the bridge and you don't want to run into any problems later (IE: you wouldn't want the DHCP server to give out 192.168.1.5 to your laptop if 192.168.1.5 was the IP that you set the bridge for.) If you have a device with a static IP, it should always be outside the DHCP range. The exception is if you are using IP reservation (in which case the DHCP server will always assign the same IP address to a piece of equipment based on the equipment's MAC address).

 

[cardiac]

Got it Wuzup101.
Thanks!