Wireless bridging and the Linksys WRT54G2

Why on earth would Linksys ship a wireless router that did not support running in wireless bridge mode? That is the question that I was asking myself today. My main wireless router is an Airport Extreme. I had an old b/g Linksys WRT54G2 v1.0 hanging around so I decided that I would take the time to create a dual-band wireless network, which is described nicely here.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the WRT54G2 firmware doesn’t support a bridge configuration. I’m baffled as to why this is the case. I’ve had older versions of the WRT series that most certainly did support this.

Apparently, there is a 3rd-party initiative to create firmware for these devices with more features. I scanned through the instructions and it was more work than I cared to do at the moment. I was also worried by the fact that you cannot easily return to the Linksys firmware and by the number of people complaining about things not working correctly.

Maybe when I feel more adventurous I’ll give it a try again. Or I’ll just buy a new Airport Extreme with dual-band built-in.