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

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.

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. 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.
   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).
3. 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.
4. 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.
   
5. Once the configuration has been successfully done we can see the SonicWall repeater associated on the basestation:
   
6. 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
   
   
   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).