Calling all technical gurus

[southerngale]

I have a yet to be hooked up blu-ray player (LG BD370). It can stream Netflix, YouTube, etc. but it does not have a built-in wireless connection. I have a Netgear router and several computers, a printer, my Wii, PS3, and occasionally my phone (which runs on 3G too so Wi-Fi can be turned off) running off my wireless signal. They're not all going at the same time though, but often several computers, or some assortment of a few things. My Wi-Fi works great. Anyway, I want my blu-ray player to have internet access so I can try out Netflix and also I have a Dish HD DVR in the same room that has some cool features if connected online as well. It's too far from my router to hard wire and I have spent several weeks (off and on) researching what I need to get them online. There seem to be quite a few options and while I've learned more about how this stuff works than I knew before, I'm still rather confused. Some people recommend powerline adapters. Others recommend a wireless bridge. I even saw recommendations for gaming adapters as they're apparently not just for gaming systems, but not sure if that is just another name for a bridge. I didn't read much about them (if they are something separate) as it wasn't something I initially started researching, but saw mentioned a few times.

Correct me if I'm wrong... I think I have read enough to come to the following conclusions: a wireless bridge would possibly stream a little better than a powerline adapter (depending on I guess a gazillion different things), but it's a pain in the butt to initially set up, and that would be particularly true for someone like me, who doesn't know how to reconfigure my router, etc. However, I found step by step instructions posted in an Amazon review for one particular bridge and several more saying that the instructions worked and made setup much easier.
A powerline adapter is a much easier setup, but not quite as good of a connection once set up. In many cases, people said Netflix streamed fine, but I saw at least one person say it lagged (could have been another issue of course). Some reviews suggested a bridge might be faster. Others didn't.

In most cases, each person's home setup was a little different than mine and many of the responders seem matter of fact that one option is better than the other. It's probably pretty close to even as to how many say a wireless bridge is better and how many say a powerline adapter is better. I'm not sure I'm thrilled with using my electrical wiring for this, but I'm not really sure why either. lol

My understanding is that you need 2 powerline adapters to start: one that connects to the router and one that would connect near my blu-ray player and DVR. What I'm not sure about is if I would need TWO adapters, one each for the blu-ray player and the DVR. That could be a problem as a powerline adapter cannot be connected to a power strip and needs its own outlet. That would be a problem in the bedroom as there's 2 doorways on each side of the location of the blu-ray player and the DVR and I have to have power to the TV, etc. Moving it all isn't an option.
The plus side to it would be that with the one adapter in the router, if I wanted, I could just buy another adapter for the living room and then stream Netflix from the PS3 and have internet for that HD DVR as well. I think that would be more economical and practical than buying and configuring another bridge.

Also, I'm not sure how much this would affect using powerline adapters, but my house was built in 1965. It has been updated and added onto, but I'm not sure if it still has any original wiring.

My question is... what do you think? Is it that big of a deal either way? And what about a gaming adapter? They seem to be less expensive, overall. And if you have a preference as to which is better, please say why. And what about a brand? Amazon has a ZyXEL bridge that is much less expensive than others I've seen, and it gets excellent reviews.... better than the more expensive Cisco Linksys at Best Buy. I am very much drawn to the ease of a powerline adapter, if it works just as well.

Any help would be much appreciated!!

[gtalum]

How long ago did you buy your Blu-Ray player? You might be best off returning it and buying one with built-in wifi. They're not much more expensive, as a rule.

[southerngale]

At Christmas... too late to return it. We got a PS3 for Christmas as well, so we've used that to watch blu-ray movies. And I'm finally getting around to hooking up the blu-ray player in my bedroom. I got a fantastic deal on it and it was much cheaper than the one with built-in WiFi. It has great reviews, but I didn't realize it would be such a chore to get it online. Any suggestions?

[gtalum]

My suggestion is the wireless bridge. It may take some setting up, but IMHO they're not that difficult. The powerline adapters are inconsistent. They work great in some places and not so well in others.

Just find a local teenager to help.

[southerngale]

Thanks for the advice. While not "plug-and-play" like powerline adapters, I guess they are better once set up. I love the idea of just hooking it up and it's good to go, but not at the expense of reliability and quality of streaming. Another plus for the bridge is that all of the ones I looked at had multiple ports where as the powerline adapters just had one. And since they require a wall outlet and you can't use a power strip, that would be a bit of a pain for multiple devices.

Now I just have to pick which wireless bridge. Perhaps the one with good reviews AND detailed instructions on how to set up.

Look at all this. It looks easy enough except for the WEP stuff. I have a Wii and PS3, which both required the password to get online, but I don't have an XBOX 360. I just looked up my router and it lists both WEP and WPA under security (pasted below). When he mentions a passphrase that you use for your router's security or the actual 128 bit security code, isn't he just referring to my password for my network security?

# Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) 64-bit, 128-bit encryption
# Wi-Fi Protected Access, Pre-Shared Key (WPA-PSK, WPA2-PSK)

5.0 out of 5 stars Works very well, but is a bit confusing to setup., February 2, 2010
By J. Ferguson "jimsrod" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: ZyXEL WAP3205 Wireless N Access Point / Ethernet Bridge (Electronics)


Once you have it setup it works flawlessy. Problem is setting it up for the first time. Documentation is not user friendly to the non-tech savvy. I'm using it as a wireless bridge / access point with my Sony blue-ray player. I already have a Linksys wireless router using WEP encryption (forced to use this because my XBOX 360 doesn't support WPA). To make it easy for others doing the same thing use the following steps:

1. Change your pc or laptop's ethernet adapter's IP address to 192.168.1.3 To do this on Vista or Windows 7 you open you network sharing center then you open your ethernet LAN adapter settings (or manage network connections in Vista). Select the Internet protocol v4 (IPv4) and go into properties. Manually put in the IP address with subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and don't worry about the gateway address.

2. Connect your WAP3205 to your pc/laptop with the ethernet cable that is provided. Of course make sure you plugged in the power to it or your going nowhere. Open up your preferred browser (IE, firefox, netscape, etc.) and then type in the address bar 192.168.1.2 and now you will be connected to the WAP3205. Type in the default password of 1234, you are now prompted to change your password to whatever you want it to be.

3. Now that your in the WAP3205 click on Expert Mode. When in this mode on the far left you will see Status and below it Monitor, Configuration and Maintenance. Click on Maintenance and then hit the plus sign in front of Maintenance once you are in. Go to the last option of Sys OP Mode then select Client Mode and hit apply.

4. Go back to the far left and hit configuration then go to Wireless LAN. You will see tabs for Profile, Site Survey and WPS. Hit the Profile tab and then hit the Add button. Type in your network name / SSID and then select your security drop down box. Select WEP if you have a setup like me with the XBOX 360 or if you don't care about security select the no security option. Type in your passphrase that you use for your router's security or the actual 128 bit security code (or 64 bit if that is what you use) and hit apply. Then select your newly created profile and hit the activate button. If it's configured correctly you will get a green check. Now your done on this end.

5. Disconnect your WAP3205 from your pc/laptop and change your pc or laptop's ethernet adapter settings back to whatever it was before.

6. Go to your blue-ray player and disconnect the power cord for about a minute or more. Connect the WAP3205 to the blue-ray player with the ethernet connection and power your blue-ray player back on. The blue-ray player will automatically pick up the network settings from the WAP3205 and you will be done.

Hope this is helpful and if you don't have an XBOX 360 or if you use WPA for security the setup should be easier.

So far so good with the Zyxel WAP3205...I had used the Linksys WET610N (2 separate units) and they both failed. The first one worked a couple of days before the wireless stopped working and the second one's wireless failed right out of the box. The WET610N's are way easier to configure but they are too expensive and for me totally unrealiable. The WAP3205 is a steal and worth the effort when you consider the rock solid connection I have now, besides it was less than half the price of the Linksys. It's not as nice looking as the Linksys that's for sure but the main thing is it works as described.

[gtalum]

I'm sure he's talking about the WEP or WPA key.

What brand of router are you running right now? There should be a section entitled something like "Wireless Settings" in the administration page that you can access for your router (usually by typing "192.168.1.1" in your browser's address bar. Under the "wireless Settings" (or similar) section, there should be a section telling you whether you have WEP, WPA, or neither active.

If security is active, there should also be a security key (for WEP it's 26 digits, all of which should be the numbers 0-9 or letters A-F). I'm not as familiar with WPA as I don't use it.

[southerngale]

NETGEAR RANGEMAX WIRELESS ROUTER
WPN824

When I typed in "192.168.1.1" it requires a username and password. Apparently, in my little book of 50 million passwords, that one wasn't written down. Figures.
I can do a hard reset, but then I would have to reconfigure the router. I'm not sure how complicated that is with so many things already wirelessly connected to my router. I guess I could just get the wireless bridge, try that guy's steps, and see what happens.

[gtalum]

The default username and password for Netgear routers is either username "admin" and no password, or username and password are both "admin".

[southerngale]

The default username and password for Netgear routers is either username "admin" and no password, or username and password are both "admin".

Neither worked. I guess I'm up that creek without a paddle, eh?

[lester]

The default username and password for Netgear routers is either username "admin" and no password, or username and password are both "admin".

Neither worked. I guess I'm up that creek without a paddle, eh?

try "admin" and "password"

[southerngale]

"admin" and "password" did the trick. Thanks!

My security is WPA-PSK

There's a 10 digit passphrase, but it's all asterisks. Now I just gotta crack that code...

[coriolis]

holy crap, Kelly, I got a headache reading your original post. I don't think that there's enough good movies out there to go through all that. I'll wait until they get released to TNT or one of the free cable channels.

[southerngale]

lol Ed. The ironic thing... I record a lot of movies on DVR and rarely have time to watch them. I also have quite a few unopened DVDs that I bought, but haven't gotten around to watching, yet I want streaming Netflix through my blu-ray player. Go ahead... make fun.

I don't know the passphrase, so I'm not sure what to do. I have the wireless bridge in my cart, but haven't ordered it yet.

[gtalum]

I'm not sure what to tell you about the passphrase. if I was sitting there I could probably figure it out, but I'm not good at long-distance technical support. I wish I could help more.

[Stephanie]

I know with our wireless router after we installed it it gave us our passphrase. We originally went wireless several years ago using Linksys - what a pain in the ass! Totally un-user friendly.

Anyway, do you still have your Netgear router information around? Didn't you need the passphrase for that router for the other computers as well for the security? Marty and I share a wireless router using Verizon and I do have the passphrase written down just in case. I believe that I did need it for my PC to be able to access the router from his computer.

How's about Netgear - can they help? Wouldn't you need the passphrase for the wireless bridge to work as well? I am not a techie by any stretch.

[southerngale]

Oh, is the passphrase the sequence that I made up as my security key? Like what I used when I got a new laptop and computers, my Droid, and what guests need when they come over and tap into my wireless network? If so, then duh. Yeah, I know that! I made it up and have used it often.

[Stephanie]

I believe that's what it is Kelly. There are too many terms out there describing them same thing. I wish that they would all just call it "passphrase" or "security key" and be done with it.

It think that was part of our problem when we first setup Linksys for our wireless network. They were using those two phrases to describe the same thing. How the heck is a regular person supposed to be able to understand that jargon? Anyway, it took us numerous attempts before we realized they were looking for the samething.

I hope it works for you!

[southerngale]

I ordered it. I'll let y'all know when I get it up and running and start my free trial of Netflix. Wish me luck!

Thanks for everyone's help!

[Stephanie]

Good luck!