Configure a WDS Bridge on a Tomato Guest VLAN

Mark Berry March 24, 2012

I’ve been happily using my Tomato router with a guest wireless VLAN isolated from my main wired LAN. I described the setup here. Now, I want to bridge a second router using the Wireless Distribution System (WDS). Setting up a Netgear WGT624v3 as the bridged router was a challenge in itself, so I wrote that up here. But once I got bridge mode working, I was somewhat alarmed to find that the bridged router was getting IP addresses from the main (supposedly secure, wired) LAN, not from the wireless VLAN, even though it was connected wirelessly! Especially considering that bridged mode on the Netgear only works with WEP security, I definitely needed to get the bridged router off the main VLAN and onto the guest wireless VLAN.

Use a Netgear WGT624v3 as a Bridge

Mark Berry March 24, 2012

There are several articles and lots of confusion on this topic out there. Here is what worked for me.

First, let’s clarify terms.

Set Up VLAN and Site-to-Site VPN with Tomato

Mark Berry November 14, 2011

I wrote recently about setting up guest wireless with the Tomato router firmware. I also needed to be able to use site-to-site OpenVPN between two routers running Tomato. I’m using a “Toastman” build that includes both VLAN and VPN functionality, but how can I use them at the same time?

Set Up Guest Wireless with Tomato

Mark Berry November 4, 2011

I’ve been learning Tomato router firmware. This open-source firmware can enhance a low-end wireless router with some pretty advanced features.

One of my goals was to set up my wireless for guest-only access, i.e. not connected to my internal LAN (which are all hard-wired connections). Here’s one way to do that.