WZR-HP-G300NH Experience

[neighbor]

Basically I want to know what others experiences with Gargoyle on the WZR-HP-G300NH. The rest of the post gets a bit winded so feel free to just chime in on this part if you wish.

Now for the long winded part, I have a rather complex network setup and have been a long time user of DD-WRT. I have, however, gotten pretty sick of the wifi dropouts. I have heard from "Chip M" here http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 8c031ac68a that the wifi issues may not be present with Gargoyle.

While I am capable of performing everything necessary to get vanilla openwrt up and running, it is a bit more time consuming that I prefer. I am looking for more of a turnkey solution.

Current setup is with a DD-WRT flashed WRT600N which I plan on leaving as it seems to work well. This is my internet facing router with a PS3 and NAS hardwired. This broadcasts to my WZR-HP-G300NH which is in client bridge mode. My primary workstation is hardwired to this along other PCs from time to time. I need to restart my WZR every day or two because it loses communication to the access point. It maintains the connection with great signal quality (-45 to -35 or so) but simply cannot communicate over wifi unless the wireless service is restarted or (much more commonly) the entire router is restarted.

I would like to hardwire my NAS to the WZR with my main pc for the added speed, but don't want to lose communication from all my other wireless devices (typically several PCs, android, and sometimes PS3) when the wifi on the WZR drops out. I also don't want the WZR's wifi dropouts to affect internet usage which is why it is the wireless client rather than the internet facing router.

I would like to hear any comments on if/how well Gargoyle would work in this situation. Also any comments or suggestions on the overall network setup would be appreciated.

Oh, and one final question, if gargoyle works well with the WZR and I decide to connect my NAS directly to it, can I create a Virtual SSID that my wireless devices can connect directly to the WZR rather than going wirelessly to my main AP, then wirelessly to my WZR? And if so, does DHCP traverse this from the gateway to the clients?

[DoesItMatter]

While I am capable of performing everything necessary to get vanilla openwrt up and running, it is a bit more time consuming that I prefer. I am looking for more of a turnkey solution.

Honestly, if you want the quickest solution to your problem
Wire connect the WRT600N to your WZR-HP-G300NH
That will be THE quickest and most problem free solution you
will ever have with all the devices and setup you want.

I know that is not what you want to hear but that is THE solution.

I would like to hardwire my NAS to the WZR with my main pc for the added speed, but don't want to lose communication from all my other wireless devices (typically several PCs, android, and sometimes PS3) when the wifi on the WZR drops out. I also don't want the WZR's wifi dropouts to affect internet usage which is why it is the wireless client rather than the internet facing router.

Hopefully your NAS is going to be connected via a LAN port and
not the USB port as neither DD-WRT nor OpenWRT/Gargoyle, etc
have any really good performance via USB NAS.

You are also facing an issue where you are mixing radios.

The WRT600N has Broadcom, where the WZR-HP-G300NH is Atheros
Right away you will never have true consistency and stability with
these 2 devices, you will always be tinkering with them, messing
with settings, reboots, etc. I am not just saying this, I've tested
dozens of devices with both Atheros, Broadcom, and RaLink and
have found your best connections are with similar radios.

I would like to hear any comments on if/how well Gargoyle would work in this situation. Also any comments or suggestions on the overall network setup would be appreciated.

As above your network situation is not that complex, but due to the
number of devices and you wanting to have stability, again, your
#1 most stable fix, which will prevent HOURS and HOURS of
constant maintenance, troubleshooting, tweaking, etc, will be
to connect the 2 routers via a wired connection.

Oh, and one final question, if gargoyle works well with the WZR and I decide to connect my NAS directly to it, can I create a Virtual SSID that my wireless devices can connect directly to the WZR rather than going wirelessly to my main AP, then wirelessly to my WZR? And if so, does DHCP traverse this from the gateway to the clients?

This is possible but not via the GUI, you would have to setup
Virtual SSID's via the command line and these types are not currently
the greatest on stability.

Yes, Gargoyle is quite solid on the WZR-HP-G300NH as an
Access Point and also when you connect devices directly to it.
Using it as a Client Bridge should be ok as well, but I would not count
on having weeks of uptime on the routers connection.
I'd say you're still looking at every week or every other week doing
some router reboots just to refresh the connection.

[neighbor]

While I am capable of performing everything necessary to get vanilla openwrt up and running, it is a bit more time consuming that I prefer. I am looking for more of a turnkey solution.

Honestly, if you want the quickest solution to your problem
Wire connect the WRT600N to your WZR-HP-G300NH
That will be THE quickest and most problem free solution you
will ever have with all the devices and setup you want.

I know that is not what you want to hear but that is THE solution.

I knew this was coming but yes, I know this would be the best solution. My choice for doing this wireless is partially a proof of concept. If I can make something like this work, I can use it for my clients. That and I'm just too lazy to get my punchdown tool and string a cable.

I would like to hardwire my NAS to the WZR with my main pc for the added speed, but don't want to lose communication from all my other wireless devices (typically several PCs, android, and sometimes PS3) when the wifi on the WZR drops out. I also don't want the WZR's wifi dropouts to affect internet usage which is why it is the wireless client rather than the internet facing router.

Hopefully your NAS is going to be connected via a LAN port and
not the USB port as neither DD-WRT nor OpenWRT/Gargoyle, etc
have any really good performance via USB NAS.

It's a true network attached NAS. Tho my 4TB nas is getting a bit dated.

You are also facing an issue where you are mixing radios.

The WRT600N has Broadcom, where the WZR-HP-G300NH is Atheros
Right away you will never have true consistency and stability with
these 2 devices, you will always be tinkering with them, messing
with settings, reboots, etc. I am not just saying this, I've tested
dozens of devices with both Atheros, Broadcom, and RaLink and
have found your best connections are with similar radios.

I knew the WZR was Atheros and the WRT was Broadcom but I have primarily had issues mixing radios with WDS but not so much with AP/Client. Though I will admit that I typically connect devices to my Cisco networks. Never really had issues connecting either Atheros or Broadcom (only two I use) devices as clients.

I would like to hear any comments on if/how well Gargoyle would work in this situation. Also any comments or suggestions on the overall network setup would be appreciated.

As above your network situation is not that complex, but due to the
number of devices and you wanting to have stability, again, your
#1 most stable fix, which will prevent HOURS and HOURS of
constant maintenance, troubleshooting, tweaking, etc, will be
to connect the 2 routers via a wired connection.

yep

Oh, and one final question, if gargoyle works well with the WZR and I decide to connect my NAS directly to it, can I create a Virtual SSID that my wireless devices can connect directly to the WZR rather than going wirelessly to my main AP, then wirelessly to my WZR? And if so, does DHCP traverse this from the gateway to the clients?

This is possible but not via the GUI, you would have to setup
Virtual SSID's via the command line and these types are not currently
the greatest on stability.

I did see an SSID to Broadcast under with Gargoyle set to client bridge mode. Does this accomplish what I was referring to?

Yes, Gargoyle is quite solid on the WZR-HP-G300NH as an
Access Point and also when you connect devices directly to it.
Using it as a Client Bridge should be ok as well, but I would not count
on having weeks of uptime on the routers connection.
I'd say you're still looking at every week or every other week doing
some router reboots just to refresh the connection.

I was afraid of that. I used to have WRT-54G (w/DD-WRT) internet facing wireless to WRT-54GS (DD-WRT) hardwired to WRT-600N which had my PC and NAS hardwired and was broadcasting wireless. This was the best setup and I may have to return to that to be happy. Just kinda wanted to use both my nice N devices to get a nice fast wifi backbone.

I do have Gargoyle 1.4.2 installed now. Had to winscp the file as my DD-WRT couldn't see past the gateway in spite of my pc behind it being able to get out to the internet. Anyway, it seems to be working well except... It has a weird tendency to work perfectly until I access the web interface. I opened the BW Distribution and it dropped wifi connection (currently running a continuous ping to gateway). I had to save the connection settings (in spite of not changing anything) to get reconnected. I then let it go for 10-15 minutes with a stable link (95% 1ms pings). Then the second I went in to look for a wireless signal strength (which I didn't find) and it did it again. Had to save the unchanged connection settings to restore.

Except for this kinda weird problem, I am relatively pleased with Gargoyle. It has been the best openwrt experience I have had bar none. After at least a dozen attempts at openwrt, I am finally starting to appreciate it.

[neighbor]

I see from your sig that you use several different flavors for your router F/Ws. I also notice you have "Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH = Gargoyle 1.4.2" in your signature. Is this because you've found this to be the most stable F/W on this device? Are there other flavors that have worked just as well or better?

[DoesItMatter]

I see from your sig that you use several different flavors for your router F/Ws. I also notice you have "Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH = Gargoyle 1.4.2" in your signature. Is this because you've found this to be the most stable F/W on this device? Are there other flavors that have worked just as well or better?

Well there are really only 2 flavors for the WZR-HP-G300NH

DD-WRT or OpenWRT

DD-WRT or the Buffalo Branded DD-WRT are both OK but not great

OpenWRT and Gargoyle (same just better GUI + extra's) is much more
stable and reliable than DD-WRT on the router.

[neighbor]

Ok, so I broke out my old WRT-54GL (not GS) and put that as my internet facing router. So far, I have a relatively stable link between that and my WRT-600N with 5GHz disabled at my desk (+1 for broadcom to broadcom). I also hardwired my NAS back at my desk. I am going to give Gargoyle a try to broadcast from my desk as a secondary AP (off my WRT-600N).

Since there's an issue with DHCP propogating through a client bridge (DD-WRT), all my devices that need media will connect to Gargoyle with static IPs assigned. We'll see how that works. I'm really crossing my fingers because I have recovered my WZR several times with TFTP and it usually isn't very fun and I don't really want to mess with that to get it back to DD-WRT (which def doesn't work well on this device).

[neighbor]

DD-WRT has an issue propogating dhcp through client/bridge devices. However, a neat side effect of this new config is that using gargoyle as an AP behind my client/bridge device is that I now get dhcp to all my clients that are behind it.

While it works, and I get internet (client<-wifi->WZR<-wired->WRT-600N<-wifi->WRT54GL<-wired->Internet), I notice it hands out it's own IP as the gateway (probably because it's in gateway mode which is the only way to enable AP). The WAN is disabled and in the gargoyle IP settings, I have my true gateway (wrt-54gl) set as the gateway which is probably why it works.

I have another question about DHCP, but since it's not related to this original topic, I started a new one here:
http://www.gargoyle-router.com/phpbb/vi ... f=6&t=1783

[neighbor]

I want to thank you "DoesItMatter" for your help, it is greatly appreciated.

As an update, gargoyle appears to work better than any other firmware on this device when functioning as an access point. I highly recommend the use of openwrt/gargoyle for this device over dd-wrt or stock firmware.

[slybunda]

same problem with me, using the router as client bridge, it tends to crash and lock up often requiring a power cycle.

[DoesItMatter]

Question for sabrine & slybunda,

Are your configs similar?

i.e. are you both running the WZR-HP-G300NH as client bridge setup?

What kind of internet usage are you running?

Do you have USB storage drives attached to the G300NH?

Are either of you doing any torrents on the router?