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I moved into a college dorm that provides WiFi with WPA2-Enterpise+PEAP - every student must supply an individual username and password to connect to the university network. One of my devices, a game console, does not support WPA2-Enterprise, only WPA2-Personal. Normally one would simply get a network switch that connects to the host network via WAN and connect the local devices via LAN/WLAN, but there are no LAN ports available to plug my own switches/routers to.

My idea is to have a switch that connects to the school network via WPA2-Enterprise+PEAP like a normal computer would, but then hosts another access point that uses something simpler that my other devices can support (either LAN or WPA2-Personal).

Which then brings the question: what do I need to set up a WLAN-to-(W)LAN switch with different authentication protocols? I've only configured LAN-to-(W)LAN switches before and I don't know what kind of features I should be looking for when buying a network switch that lets me do the above. Googling "WiFi-to-WiFi switch" yields either LAN-to-WLAN switches or other irrelevant results.

Postscript: I have read similar questions on Superuser but they concern extending the same network with the same authentication/encryption protocols, which is not the case here.

chesnutcase
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1 Answers1

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1) If your console has a wired network port (it's ambiguous in your question whether "no LAN ports" refers to your dorm or your console), you could use a wireless bridge. Basically, a wireless bridge acts like a reverse-access-point - the wireless bridge connects to the existing WLAN, and provides a wired network port for you to connect to, seamlessly moving the traffic from the WLAN to the wired port and vice versa. See https://kb.netgear.com/227/What-is-a-wireless-bridge for a picture and possibly a better explanation. Just google "wireless bridge" and choose one that supports WPA2-Enterprise (or use OpenWRT).

2) If your console doesn't have a wired network port, you could bridge two WLANs - the WPA2-Enterprise WLAN you're trying to join, with a new WPA2-Personal WLAN you would create. You could do it with two devices, using a wireless bridge (see my first suggestion above) wired to a separate access point which you have configured with WPA2-Personal. Or, if you choose the right device, you could do it with one device, basically doing the above internally (OpenWRT can do this, especially if you get a device with two separate radios, some radios can do this simultaneously on just the one radio but that can be tricky to verify before you buy).

owrq
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