Extending My Router'S Reach: Bridge Or Repeater?

[tominbkk]

I would like to add another extension to my router's reach in my house...it covers the second floor very well, as well as the room below the mezzanine where it is located. It has a very low power in other parts of the house however, so I would like to set up what I guess is called a bridge or repeater on the first floor where the signal is decent to get to the rest of the house.

I have a couple working wireless routers left over, and am wondering if these could function in that way, or if not then what do I need to do or buy? I'm not against spending a little bit of baht, hut not too much!!!

Thanks in advance!!!

[cdnvic]

I'm guessing you have a "G" router? If so, changing to an "N" router, if your machines have N antennas will deal with your problem. I can see my N router's ssid from a few blocks away.

[welo]

Do you plan to pull a cable to connect your access point with the (base) router, or do you plan to go wireless only.

AFAIK the latter would require what is generally called a 'repeater' resp. a access point in 'repeater' mode. This will pick up the traffic on a wireless network and re-broadcast the traffic on a different channel under the same SSID. A client should detect such a setup and automatically connect to the stronger signal.

AFAIK not all (AP, router) devices support this mode, even though it is not a matter of hardware but the firmware (software).

I tried this only two times in this life, one time with two D-link devices a view years back, and just last year with two belkin devices. Both times the devices I used as 'repeater' had specifically supported this mode.

The first setup was trying to bridge a distance that was too long for those devices and was therefore not stable (outdoors, weather dependent), the second time recently was an inhouse setup and it works pretty much stable.

Both times the setup was not really straight forward. However, the troubles on my recent setup was due to some non-standard issue with my network. I assume the setup should be easy in most cases.

However, I'm still a bit wary about repeaters and would prefer a cabled connection between router and access point for better stability.

If you go for a wireless repeater setup you will probably yield best results if both devices are of the same brand (even though this recommendation might not apply any more nowadays).

welo

[innerspace]

As Welo said you would be better off with a wired connection between routers than extending the range through wireless alone.

You can do it through wireless repeaters although you want to try keep to routers by the same manufacturers when doing this.

Not all routers support this as standard but any routers running tomato or dd-wrt should be ok.

Another option would be setting one router up as a wifi client instead of router so it picks up and connects to your wifi signal.

This can then share your connection through the ethernet to another wifi router which retransmits.

But your best option is to drop an ethernet cable out of the window from the top floor to the main router and cable them together. Much better speeds and reliability.

When you cable 2 wifi routers together you can set them up with the same ssid and wep/wpa password and when you lose connection to one you reconnect to the other.

Another thing that may help if your router supports it is installing third party firmware such as tomato and dd-wrt.

These will provide increased performance and can allow increasing the wifi signal strength (admittedly with a drop in signal quality)

[cdnvic]

Why get so complicated when simply upgrading to an N router solves the issue?

[tominbkk]

Thanks for all your replies. I have a better idea of my situation now and will try and work it out with one of my friends who is better at this stuff than me! Regarding using an N Router, I have a Belkin N+ router, which I was using before and works great, but when we wanted to move the internet upstairs they told us to use the other phone line, so we did, and had to set up a new acct, using the True router provided. I got that all set up, but for the life of me when I try to switch to my Belkin and replicate the settings it still does not accept the Belkin. I then thought it might be easier to use my Belkin as a bridge or repeater. Eventually I'll work this out, I appreciate the replies and good advice here. Cheers!

[welo]

A friend has a similar setup planned that requires an extended Hotspot range. Maybe somebody on this thread can provide me an answer to this question...

Does a 802.11n-router provide extended range for 802.11g devices as well?

I mean do the usually come with more Watt power, bigger antennas or any other technology improvement that is not tied to the 802.11n protocol? Will this range increase be significantly? I know that wireless range differs between models, some being better than others.

@tominbkk

I used a Belkin access point as a repeater for a friend last year. However, this was a dedicated access point, not a router, I'm not sure if this is a standard feature in Belkin firmware, I rather doubt it. Try switching the Belkin to 'Access Point only' mode and see if you can set the mode/type to 'repeater'

It seems that the dd-wrt firmware allows a router to be configured as repeater (tomato doesn't support this feature). But flushing the firmware is not trivial I guess.

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be possible to make the Belkin work with your new TRUE phone line. If this router would solve your range problems, then I would try to tackle this problem.

However, I personally would flash the Belkin with the dd-wrt firmware just out of curiosity

welo

[welo]

Any update? Any answer to my questions?