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NetComm Wireless NTC-30WV 3G Outdoor Router with Voice
www.netcommwireless.com
Ver 1.6
Wireless Distribution System (WDS)
What is WDS?
A wireless distribution system (WDS) is a system enabling the wireless interconnection of access points in an IEEE 802.11 network.
WDS makes it possible to configure a network where a single router acts as a gateway while other routers in the network provide
additional geographical coverage for wireless clients, acting as bridges and redirecting traffic through the same gateway. WDS
provides layer 2 bridging and preserves the MAC addresses of stations connected through the WDS network. The advantage of
WDS when compared with a daisy chain of access points is that you can have one network covering a larger geographical area and
allow those clients to easily roam between the access points while retaining their IP addresses. It also means that they are not
isolated from each other and allows for easier configuration since you do not need to configure many port forwarding rules on each
access point.
The NetComm Wireless NTC-30WV and NTC-40WV routers use the 4-address frame format specified in the IEEE 802.11-1999
standard, but since the standard does not define how stations should interact to exchange frames in this format, the WDS function
on NetComm Wireless routers is not guaranteed to work with implementations from other vendors.
Configuring WDS
The following instructions describe how to configure a basic WDS setup between two routers where one of them has an active SIM
card and acts as an access point and another which has no SIM card and connects to the AP as a client in order to provide
network access to its wireless clients. The diagram below illustrates the network configuration.
Figure 44 - Basic WDS configuration example
Note:
The device acting as a client (station) must have DHCP disabled and must not have the same IP address or an IP
address within the DHCP range of the WDS AP.
The following features are incompatible with WDS:
WDS Access Point: Hot spot, Wireless client isolation
WDS Station: WiFi interface cannot be used as one of the failover interfaces, no autoroaming.