How do I setup a SonicWall firewall as a wireless repeater?

03/26/2020 20 10098

DESCRIPTION:

This article covers how to setup a SonicWall firewall as a wireless repeater. This may be useful when a wireless signal is low and needs to be repeated in different areas of a campus/building. This is a new feature on the SonicOS 6.5.x.x firmware.

RESOLUTION:

1. The first step in this process is to create a virtual interface under W0. Make sure the IP that we are assigning for the virtual interface is in same subnet as the wireless basestation and default gateway should be basestaion IP address. For example, in this article the firewall has a virtual interface 10 and assigned IP of 192.168.1.6 with default gateway as 192.168.1.1 (Netgear basestation IP).
   
2. Navigate to Wireless | Settings and select “Access Point & Station”.
   
3. Enable "WDS AP" option and configure the SSID where the wireless stations will associate to the repeater. In this configuration we have assigned the SSID as "RPD" for WDS AP to distinguish it from the original SSID that the SonicWall is going to repeat. You can also configure a VAP group here and have SonicWall radio broadcast more than one SSID.
   
4. Next we will have to enable "Station Mode". By enabling this option and filling in the correct details the SonicWall radio will associate with the wireless basestation (Netgear in this case). In this section the SSID, Authentication and Cipher type should be the same as configured on the wireless basestation. Since we are using SonicWall as repeater, we would like all the traffic from the wireless client to be forwarded to the base station. Check the boxes for “User Wireless Interface as WAN” and “WDS Station”. We will have to also select VLAN ID as the virtual interface that we created earlier (VLAN 10).
5. Now we need to configure a few settings on the wireless basestation. The settings could vary depending on the vendor. We're using a Netgear router which will act as a wireless basestation.
6. Under the "Wireless Repeating" section in Netgear, we enabled the Basestation option and defined SonicWall’s WLAN radio MAC so that it can recognize the SonicWall station as a repeater and accept the incoming connection.
   
7. Basic Wireless configuration on Netgear has to be also configured and we will use the same SSID, Authentication and Cipher under Wireless Station Settings on SonicWall (refer to point 4).
   
8. Once the configuration has been successfully done we can see the SonicWall repeater associated on the basestation:
   
9. Once the configuration is complete, we can connect to the WDS IP and access the resources.
   
10. To confirm network connectivity we can Ping / Traceroute for various destination. Open a command/terminal window and type:
    ping 192.168.1.1 - Wireless Basestation
    ping 172.16.31.1 - Default Gateway while connected to WDS SSID.
    ping 4.2.2.2 - Google DNS
    
11. In earlier configuration we used “RPD”as the WDS SSID to keep the name distinct for demonstration purpose to avoid any confusion. In a production environment the SSID name should be the same as what is being advertised by the wireless basestation. This will allow stations to associate automatically to the repeater without having them manually connect to the repeater SSID. The below is a screenshot with the updated WDS SSID to basestation SSID (Bajrangbali) and wireless station associated with the repeater.
    
    
    Notice the IP of the host. It is from the SonicWall’s WDS SSID range, not from the basestation (which will provide IP in range of 192.168.1.x).