Wireless bridge with ASUS RT-N56U

I have had the ASUS RT-N56U for the past 4 years instyalled in my home and it is serving me very well. This is a dual-band wifi router which has been on the market since 2011. It offers a lot of things which go beyond the basic wi-fi functionality.

Wifi Router ASUS RT-N56U
Asus Dual-Band Wireless-N600 Gigabit Router (RT-N56U)

Original Firmware
Original Firmware for the RT-N56U

The configuration panel of the original bios on this device looks just gorgeous. The functionality which you have built into this device is amazing and Asus is still popping out some firmware and security updates once in a while.

last week I saw that some one in our neighbourhood gava away a free wi-fi router and as it turned out it was the same exact model. So I went ahead and recovered it to install as a wi-fi extender in our house.

Now configuring the second router to act as a wireless bridge was a snap. After I provided all the login information setup the second band to handle exclusively the relay traffic and … nothing.

Wireless Bridge setup
Wireless Bridge setup

I spent a few hour tinkering with the settings and ended up empty. I tried different channels, open wifi ( not recommended ) and more. My final thought on this was “At least I did not spend any money on it..

However that was not the end of it. I searched for alternate firmwares for this router and found the Padavan & N56U Firmware. So I went ahead and installed it onto the router. the worst that could happen was that I bricked a device which I had no other use for anyways.

Afterwards configuring the access point information was straight forward with one major difference. It actually worked without any issues right off the bat. So now thatnks to the two ASUS RT-N56U – units I have wifi connectivity throughout my house and into our backyard.

Padavan Firmware interface
Padavan Firmware interface

 

2 thoughts on “Wireless bridge with ASUS RT-N56U”

  1. Hello, I’m having problems setting my Asus rt-n56u to the 2-wire att u-verse modem (pace 5031NV) as the bridge, I’m hoping you can help with my problem.

    I had no problems using the Asus router with the previous att modem (Motorola) in bridge mode.

    The problem is the connection will stop working all of a sudden when I go to a new page while the other connected pages are still working. The error message says “you have set the wrong dynamic or static IP address for your RT N56U.” Rebooting (not resetting) will usually work, but not today.

    Setting up the att 2-wire modem to be the bridge was straightforward, the instruction is very specific and I didn’t have problem with it. However I’m not totally certain that I’ve set the WAN on the Asus router to get an IP address automatically via the dhcp server. The LAN on the Asus is set to use dhcp, the WAN is set to get an IP automatically, I think that’s correct but now the Asus router can’t see the modem, I can’t access the modem using its 192.168.1.254 address.

    Do you have any suggestions?

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