Well, I had a need to put a couple of computers on my network, without running wires to them. They were both in the same place so I tried my hand at using a Netgear WRT54G. Well, it worked fine for one computer, but the other had a problem. I eventually spent some time to resolve this, and without working on this too much discovered that it was probably a limitation with my Nokia Access Point. I don’t think the Nokia can handle multiple MAC addresses per wireless association.
So, I wanted to get this working and I decided that I would have to do the double NAT solution. In this configuration, I am using the WRT54G as a client of the Nokia, and it only gets one IP address. The computers behind the WRT54G exist on a separate network and get NAT’d to the main network, which is already being NAT’d.
Well, I tried the EWRT distro, and it just wouldn’t work. Then I tried the official Netgear software. Failure again. Then I tried another distro, which I don’t remember. All caused complications and required a few tense, scary hard-resets. So, I tried the Evil Sveasoft distro, the Final Alchemy to be specific.
Wow, those guys may be jerks, but this distro was the best one. It was working in no time and had more features accessable from the web admin over any other distro. It has been rock solid for weeks. Go grab the free copies over at the Individuals site.
(Shout out to SIC for lending me the WRT54G – Thanks!)