Extending wireless signal
Community Forums/General Help/Extending wireless signal
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| Hello. A friend of mind has broadband in her house, and an ethernet cable approx 30m running to a laptop in her shop. Data speed on that is fine. But she wants to connect via wifi with other devices (i.e. phone, tablet), and the router signal just isn't strong enough at that range. What do I attach to the other end of the ethernet cable (the end that's in the shop), so that devices can connect via wifi there? |
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| A WAP. |
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| That's what I thought, but googling the subject didn't really explain it. Could I achieve the same with an additional wireless router? Or would a wireless access point be less 'painful'? |
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| you just buy the cheaper one: You do not need the routing functionality so you just disable it. If you have an older "dsl router" with the ability to use the "dsl-link-slot" as "uplink" you can even use that. If you want to get rid of the cable, use an extender, this is not wanted, so I wont explain that option in detail. edit: your topic title is kind of misleading - "extending" ... If you buy an AP or router ... connect it, give the needed SSID, Password, Channel into the setup mask, disable DHCP (this is done with the primary router on the other side of the lan cable). So to sum up: should not make a difference, just take care of disabling router functions and dhcp (except you want it). If you do not use the router functionality: take care of DNS-Server: IP-Of-Your-Main-Router Primary-Gateway: IP-Of-Your-Main-Router If you still want to use DHCP -- check that the given IPs do not collidate with the one of the primary DHCP ... so eg. for "shop WLAN" give 192.168.0.100+ while the primary is 1-99. At home my routers, modems etc got the IPs 192.168.0.254, 253, 252, ... because we wont have 200 devices connected, this distinguishs "user devices" from "connection devices" easily. bye Ron |
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| wireless bridge? An additional wireless router could work, except, most only allow for an RJ-45 uplink, and won't use a wireless link to another accesspoint for their upstream traffic |
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| bridge - a bridge is to connect two networks (eg friends living next to each other) ... this is not what Gfk described. Same for the router... he does not want to place a router in the shop which is wirelessly connected to the router in "her house". What the friend of Gfk has to do: buy a router/ap. Plug the cable from the notebook into the uplink of the router. Place another (now shorter :D) cable from the routers lan-slots into the notebook. All the other equipment in the shop can now use the wireless network the router/ap is creating. She may also feel free to add further switches or other things into the lan-slots of the ap to make another big lanparty. bye Ron |
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| I'd just get one of those wifi mains adapters/repeaters. They're pretty cheap. |
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| Routers allow to build up a separate wlan ... so the home-lan is a bit more secured than with a repeater. Albeit a repeater is surely installed easier than a router/ap ... the costs should be nearly equal (15-20€ for a cheap 300mbit router, 20-25€ for a cheap repeater with 1 lan slot - aka uplink). As the friend of Gfk uses a cable-connected laptop in the shop (maybe for a speedier connection - or for a "guaranteed" or "latency minimized" connection) she might want to keep the lan cable - routers have more lan slots than she is needing atm. What I have forgotten to mention: if you are using the same SSID/Password on the second router's wlan your devices will choose the more powerful wlan connection alone. The only disadvantage is: when moving from one cell to another, the connection may get lost for some seconds - depends on how long the device needs to change to the other AP. Stationary devices wont "change" the used wAP. But like said... routers offer additional possibilities compared to extenders - but need up to 5 minutes more of setup. bye Ron |
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| Thanks for the tips. Went up there today and managed to do it with a spare BT Homehub. Changed it's IP address, firewall off, DHCP off, working perfectly. So yeah, a tiny bit of setup work but relatively painless. |
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