From: William Park via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org>
Essentially, devices with only network port
You mean "devices with only an ethernet port (and no WiFi capability)"
connects to the repeater (directly or via switch),
Via Ethernet.
and the repeater connects to your wireless router.
Via WiFi. I assume/guess: - "connects" means "bridges" - the RP-N12 doesn't do NAT - DHCP is passed through the RP-N12 transparently
It has 3 modes: *repeater*, *media bridge*, *access point* (AP) modes. Anyways, I just found out that
(default) "repeater" mode = "media bridge" mode + "ap" mode.
In "media bridge" mode, "AP" mode is turned off. In "AP" mode, "media bridge" mode is turned off. In "repeater" mode, "media bridge" and "ap" modes are turned on.
So "media bridge" means that the WiFi of the RP-N12 is only used for talking upstream. And AP mode means that the Ethernet port is disabled. Is there a configuration where the RP-N12 bridges to upstream via its ethernet port and allows other hosts to connect to it / through it via WiFi? That's what I'd normally call an AP. It may double the effective wireless bandwidth since each packet no longer has to travel though WiFi twice. This would all be simpler if the mode names more directly described what they do: Media Bridge => disable WiFi clients AP mode => disable Ethernet clients Repeater mode => nothing disabled (They don't allow disabling both since that isn't actually useful.) (the word "client" isn't correct, but it describes how most of us think about it. Really: the device bridges a local network segment with a remote segment.)