I need a odball router

Must be cheap, 802.11 N, and good repeater mode and VPN function(either stock or via custom firmware). Preferably with removable antenna(s) so I can easily fit a bigger one.

Any recommendations?

D-link DIR-615 variant C1 or later, dirt cheap and has everything (with open firmware) except removable antennas.

Not certain about VPN, but this one is recommended as a good cheapie from the dd-wrt wiki...

TP-Link TL-WR740N

In reply to secretariata:

I think we may have a winner, $22.21 primed for the variant with a factory detachable antenna.

Ended up going with the TL-WR741ND (detachable antenna variant of the TL-WR740N). Any tips on dd-wrt?

I came here expecting something to do with woodworking … I'll leave now

my setup is elaborate and I couldn't even imagine explaining it without being E36 M3faced drunk......

Anywhere good to go for help with this sort of thing besides the dd-wrt forums? Getting it set up is proving difficult. Chipset (atheros) doesnt support straight up repeater mode, but will do a client mode with a virtual wlan interface on the side(effectively the same thing, just more involved setup). Trouble is I can't even get the client to work wired.

1) Depending on how involved your setup is, check out tomato and pfsense for your router firmware. Tomato ran great for years when I used it at home, and pfsense is supposedly great for corporate use.

2) http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/ might be a good place to start for setup tips. Also, Ive been able to find alot of obscure info on the stackoverflow.com site. Its mostly for programmers, but you never know.

Can you walk through your setup here at all? I know a few cisco engineers and between them and here we might be able to get you headed in the right direction.

In reply to mrwillie:

1. Tomato is for broadcom chipsets only.

2. Will do.

An unsecured Netgear WNDR3400 is sitting within range of me, I'd like to up the security(IE they can't see me, just my router, no bridging) and signal by running a repeater. Bought the TL-WR740ND (a TL-WR740N with a SMA antenna connector factory) and flashed with DD-WRT. My router is an atheros chipset so it won't run a repeater mode, have to set it up in client mode as a client(wifi goes in, ethernet comes out) and then tack on a virtual wifi network with the SSID and password I want, the firmware allegedly supports all of this, but I cant get it running as a client.

wbjones wrote: I came here expecting something to do with woodworking … I'll leave now

I was going to suggest an old Bosch....

Client with virtual wlan is the best way to do it. Are you saying you can't get client mode connected when your laptop is wired to the router?

In reply to GameboyRMH:

That's exactly what I intent to do, but cant get anything out of it with a wired connection in client mode, thus cannot proceed to create a virtual wlan. I can see my subnet IP(192.168.2.1) on the other router, but the MAC doesnt line up with my router?

The MAC visible to the primary router should match your repeater's wifi interface. Are you following these instructions?

https://secure.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge#Atheros

Switched to Gargoyle(DD-WRT>stock firmware>Gargoyle), 5 minutes to setup all on one page, works flawlessly.

I did the same thing once to fix the same problem with a TP-link router, but I know in that case it was a known bug between the model I was working with and DD-WRT.

As I read this more, it seems like you need to run pfsense( if I understand what your layout and goals are ) on a junk box and do the tagging there. Please overlook me if Im way off base. A cisco engineer I am not... :-)

https://www.pfsense.org/about-pfsense/

https://www.pfsense.org/about-pfsense/common-deployments.html

http://regenet.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/pfsense-creating-a-guest-wifi-with-802-1q-vlan-tagging-in-pfsense-and-dd-wrt/

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=72724.0

In reply to mrwillie:

If I wanted to go really hardcore, that's the direction I'd go, also let me run the VPN right on the AP as I wouldn't need to worry about processing power.

For the time being, the $22 TP link I bought and flashed with gargoyle will do, might buy/build a yagi antenna for it eventually(there's a Mormon church down the street that I have line of sight to with wifi that's probably worth hacking ).

Cool beans. I was assuming something more commercial. Glad u got it figured out.