I recently moved my office to a different room and can no longer get wired internet to the computers at my desk.

I thought I had good Wi-Fi in the house, but no matter what I tried I couldn’t get more than 200 Mbps to my PC. I tried multiple configurations with two wireless access points in different positions and tested various Wi-Fi cards on my computer. 200 Mbps seemed to be the hard ceiling in my office - way worse than the 900+ Mbps I’d get when wired. I can get 400-500 with a laptop right next to the main access point.

200 Mbps might sound sufficient to you, but most of my traffic is on my own local network, between my NAS, servers, and workstations. I move a lot of data around my house.

I also had issues with DHCP assigning different local IP addresses even when I manually set static ones. This was particularly annoying since I frequently use SSH and need a consistent IP for my computer.

Then I discovered this solution: Instead of using a Wi-Fi card in the PC at all, I connected the PC directly via ethernet to a remote wireless access point. The two WAPs handle the wireless communication between themselves (operating as a wireless bridge), while my PC gets a simple wired connection to the remote WAP. This gives me a consistent 750Mbps - wildly better than any Wi-Fi card or configuration I tried. Plus, the connection is more reliable and there’s no OS-level configuration or drivers/kernel compatibility issues.

Network diagram

There are some minor VLAN complications this causes, since the WAP is on the default VLAN, but I was able to manage this by setting up ACLs to control traffic between VLANs. Also you’d want to check if your access points support wireless bridging mode. But it worked for me!

If you’re considering this setup, make sure you have:

  • Access points that support wireless bridging
  • As few walls between WAPs if possible
  • The ability to position the remote WAP near your computer and power it

The results are great - near-gigabit speeds, rock-solid reliability, and no more IP addressing headaches.

Speed test results showing 760 Mbps