ZyXEL Communications NWA-3160 User Manual

 Chapter 1 Introduction

NWA-3160 Series User’s Guide

The NWA can act as a wireless network bridge and establish wireless links with 
other APs. In the figure below, the two NWAs (A and B) are connected to 
independent wired networks and have a bridge connection (A can communicate 
with B) at the same time. A NWA in repeater mode (C in Figure 3) has no Ethernet 
connection. When the NWA is in bridge mode, you should enable Spanning Tree 
Protocol (STP) to prevent bridge loops.

When the NWA is in Bridge / Repeater mode, security between APs (the Wireless 
Distribution System or WDS) is independent of the security between the wireless 
stations and the AP. If you do not enable WDS security, traffic between APs is not 
encrypted. When WDS security is enabled, both APs must use the same pre-
shared key. See 

 for more details. 

Once the security settings of peer sides match one another, the connection 
between devices is made.

At the time of writing, WDS security is compatible with other ZyXEL access points 
only. Refer to your other access point’s documentation for details.

Figure 2   Bridge Application