Wireless Bridge/Repeater

[tiptongrange]

I'm trying to connect a wired device to my wireless network using a gargoyle router. My apartment building uses Aerwave for it's residents to connect wirelessly to the Internet. The building gives each apartment their own password, then Aerwave sets up a VPN for all the devices that use that password.

What would be the best way to setup Gargoyle so that my wired device can connect to my VPN? How would I be able to find both the router's and wired device's IP addresses, and how can I access the wired device from another device on the VPN?

[Lantis]

I had not heard of Aerwave before, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

After a bit of reading, I believe that this service establishes a VLAN (not a VPN) for your devices. Please do correct me if you think I’m wrong there.

In theory then your VLAN would have an IP range, like 192.168.x.y or similar private range. Every device you connect using your credentials should receive an IP in that range and should be able to communicate with other devices using their IPs.

A few options for connecting your wired device, depending on your preferences and desired outcomes.
1. Wireless bridge mode. This is a pretty fragile config, it can be a bit flaky. The benefit is that the router “disappears” and your wired device receives an IP in the same range as all of your other devices and acts like it is directly connected. The IP of it would be found on the device itself. The router IP is referred to as the “bridge IP” in the GUI and is again in the range for your VLAN.
2. Wireless client mode (with DMZ). If you only have a single device to connect to the network this is a good way. Your router will connect like a regular device, and your wired device will receive an IP on a different subnet (provided and managed by Gargoyle). To communicate with the device you would use the WAN IP address of the router, and through use of the DMZ feature everything will be forwarded to the device. This effectively disables the “firewall” on the router, but inside your VLAN you should trust all of your devices (right?).
3. Wireless client mode (with port forwards). Same as above but if you have more than 1 wired device you need to connect. In this case you need to port forward individual services you want from the devices and you can then access those similarly above.

[tiptongrange]

Thanks very much! Yes, I think you're correct, it's a VLAN rather than a VPN. I got it up and running using option 2 since I have only one device attached to the router (Gargoyle v1.15).

I have one question though, under Connection > Basic > Internet / WAN > Wan Ethernet Port: Should it be set to Disable or set to Bridge to LAN, and what's the difference?


To give you a little more info on this, I also tried option 1 but couldn't get the VLAN to recognize the router.
First I assigned the Bridge IP one number higher than other devices on the VLAN,
then I left it blank to see if it would receive an address through DHCP, but no luck with either. Maybe if I set it to the address the DHCP server gave it, then it would work.

[Lantis]

That option just lets you gain an extra “LAN” port by using the unused WAN port for a wireless setup. In your case with only 1 device, doesn’t matter

For option 1 you set the address to something outside the subnet entirely (whole different address range). In a setup like yours it gets a little difficult to guess empty subnets because it is creating so many of them for all of your neighbours, but it eventually you’d get one right.
This dummy address is only used to make the bridging work, but it is important all the same.

Stick with option 2 I reckon.