Can I make two wireless routers communicate using the wireless?

I want to make a setup like this:

cable modem <-cable-> wireless router 1 <-wireless-> wireless router 2 in another room <-cables-> PCs in another room

Basically, I want to extend my network access across the house and then have a bunch of network jacks available for my office PCs.

Right now, I have a cable modem going to a wireless router in one room and a PC with a wireless PCI card in it in the office on the other side of the house. I use internet connection sharing with the other PCs in the office. The problem is that ICS is flaky, especially when I switch to VPN on the Windows box to access files at work. I picked up a wireless USB adapter that I thought I could share among the PCs I work on but I'm not very happy with it so I'm going to return it (NDISwrapper support for it is poor).

Is this possible? My wireless experience so far has been pretty straightforward so I have no idea what kind of hardware is available. I've looked at network extenders but those just look like repeaters for signal strength. I want wired network jacks in my office.

Solution 1:

The search term you're looking for is "wireless bridge". There's an article about it and how to set it up in the DD-WRT Wiki. It's also goes without saying that if you're using two routers that can run DD-WRT, it's fully supported and fairly easy to setup.

Solution 2:

There are a lot of good ideas in the answers here. I'm going to compile them into a meta-answer and indicate what I did.

What I was looking for was a wireless bridge. In this configuration, two wireless routers communicate via their wireless connection and the remote router can make its wired ports available to nearby computers.

You can set this up in one of two ways.

1) Buy two routers which support bridging. You will probably have a much easier time getting them to talk to each other if they are from the same manufacturer.

2) Install replacement firmware in your router which supports bridging. Obviously, you do this at your own risk. The procedures do not appear that difficult but you can brick your router if you mess up. The firmware that got the most mentions here is DD-WRT. Be SURE to check that your router is on the list of supported hardware before making a purchase and be especially sure to pay attention to version numbers.

I went with the first option, mainly because I did not want to invest $150-200 on good wireless routers and then risk bricking them. If I had access to some cheap, supported wireless routers I DEFINITELY would have screwed around with the second option.

Here is what I did:

I bought two NETGEAR WPN824 wireless routers for $60 each (Best Buy had them on sale). Only WPN824v3 supports bridging which is sad because my current router is a WPN824v2. Once you get them past the initial setup (the install CD is a big waste of time, by the way), setting up a bridge is easy. You just check a box on the web configuration page and enter the mac address of the other end. The only thing I wasn't happy with is that the router can only support WEP in bridging mode which kind of sucks. So it turns out that I'll be keeping my old router around since WPA is more secure and I really don't want to go around to the myriad network-aware devices in my home and reconfigure them. Note that you CAN run a wireless bridge AND access the wireless normally with the WPN824, I just chose not to do so. So now I'm all set - I have wireless throughout my home and I have four available wired ports in my office, all for the low cost of $120. The WPN824 supports a couple of repeater points so you can buy another one if you need some wired connections elsewhere in your home or business.

The final chain is:

[cable modem] <-cable-> [original non-bridged router] <-cable-> [new router, bridge base] <-wireless-> [new router, bridge repeater] <-cables-> [PCs in office]