[dangerousmouse]

This is the situation;

I have moved house and my ISP refused to install a second phone line at the new address in order that I could continue my service with them. The property I now live in has an active broadband connection with wifi router (I do not have physical access to this, so my homeplug kit cannot be used). However, I can access it via the web based login.

I have a number of devices that were all connected by LAN, by use of a gigabit switch. Problem I have is that I cannot get the internet to the swtich. Did some research and found a wireless bridge would do the job. A little more research and I have discovered that a router can be set to act as a wireless bridge. I decided that a router would have more useability in the future than a bridge, so dug deep and bought the Asus rt-n66u.

Spent last night flashing it with the DD-WRT firmware and setting up up.

Initially I set it as a wireless client bridge. This allowed me to connect my switch via cable and everything was hunky dory.

This morning I discovered that it can also work as a repeater bridge. Excellent, I thought. I can set this up as a wireless repeater and boost the wireless signal on my side of the house AND have all of my cabled devices connected too.

However, this isn't working out so well....
The internet seems to be slower, streaming Netflix on Apple TV has resulted in loss of quality. The info page on the DD-WRT is showing a wireless connection speed of only 5.5mbps!!

Is there anything that I can do to dramatically improve this connection?

Thanks.

[texnnyc]

I don't know what your initial speed is/was, but generally a repeater bridge *halves* the bandwidth you have because it spends half the time communicating with the access point and the other half repeating the signal to wireless clients.

[dangerousmouse]

Well, I switched it back to client bridged mode and it is reporting 58.5mbps.

Other than the DD-WRT info page, is there any other way that this can be tested. Ie, see if the speed that DD-WRT is reporting is the ACTUAL speed?

Thanks.

EDIT: Update - Seems that the wireless speed has dropped back down to 5.5mbps.

I was getting 36mpbs with my old wireless g USB adapter, how can this be right?

UPDATE 2: Does the DD-WRT run some kind of 'smart' technology where the wireless rate is adjusted automatically dependant upon usage. Started streaming video online to see what happened and the wireless rate shot back up to 85mpbs and it fluctuating between 62 and 103mbps. No problems streaming/downloading. Bizzare!

Out of interest I knocked it back onto repeater bridge and the speeds did drop (running between 26 and 52). I'll settle for it remaining as wireless client bridge. It's only my iPhone that is wifi anyway.