Creating a wireless repeater to get the dead zones in my house

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
K

Kevinpc1

Honorable
Nov 4, 2013
9
0
10,510
I use a TP-Link WR940N (ver 1.5) as my standard router at home. I have a spare, older router that is a Netgear N300 WNR2000 (ver 3) that I would like to use as a repeater in my house to extend the signal of the router.

As far as I know, I can't really see any option to make the TP-Link a repeater, but the Netgear one has an option that allows it to be repeater, hence why I want to do it in that fashion.

My problem is that I don't want to extend the range from the first (as of now, it will be called the "master) router to the second (will be called "repeater") by a wired connection, but by wireless, where the master sends the signal to the repeater where then the repeater broadcasts it to the dead zones in my house.

The thing is, I have no idea how to do this or where to start! I've tried to google it and search on forums but there are no many conflicting ways to do so that for those of us that aren't really tech-savvy (such as myself) I really am confused on what to do.

For example, many people say that if you want to convert a router to be a repeater, that you should use DD-WRT to create a custom firmware, but I don't think I need to do so because the repeater already allows it to be a repeater in its settings.

Can someone kind enough lead me to solve this dilemma? Do I need to connect my computer first to the repeater? What MAC do I put in the repeater to do this? What do I do first, last, etc.

I would be really appreciative if someone with such expertise could help me by listing the process step by step, etc.

Thanks in advance!

Please reply if you need more data or whatnot. If necessary, I can share links to files/pictures through my Skydrive or Dropbox accounts (btw, I am on Windows 7 64bit on my PC and connected by an ethernet cable to the master and on Windows 8.1 64bit on my Laptop, connected via wireless to the master, if that info helps at all).
 
Solution
RealBeast
What you *really* want is not a repeater or extender, but a wireless access point that is in the area where your wireless signal from the main router is poor. That will give you the best and highest speed results.

To do that you need a wireless AP or better yet configure your old router as an AP, which is quite easy and saves some $$.

You need to connect the main router to the AP with an Ethernet cable, or if that is not possible you can use a pair of powerline adapters. I usually have to do it that way since most clients don't want walls torn up and nobody seems to have an easy attic to run cables anymore. The quality of the powerline adapters that you need depends on what you will use on the wireless AP. If you want to stream HD...
Sort by date Sort by votes
RealBeast

RealBeast

Titan
Moderator
Sep 13, 2010
17,109
473
104,790
What you *really* want is not a repeater or extender, but a wireless access point that is in the area where your wireless signal from the main router is poor. That will give you the best and highest speed results.

To do that you need a wireless AP or better yet configure your old router as an AP, which is quite easy and saves some $$.

You need to connect the main router to the AP with an Ethernet cable, or if that is not possible you can use a pair of powerline adapters. I usually have to do it that way since most clients don't want walls torn up and nobody seems to have an easy attic to run cables anymore. The quality of the powerline adapters that you need depends on what you will use on the wireless AP. If you want to stream HD video or game, you need to spend the money on the best powerline adapters (currently the Zyxel PLA 5205kit), otherwise you can use far cheaper units like the PLA4205 if it is just for Internet and phone access.

It is easy to configure the old router as an AP -- turn off DHCP on it, give it a static address (that you will also enter in the main router) that is in the network range but outside the main router DHCP range (so if the main router gateway address is 192.168.1.1, make the AP 1.2 and start the DHCP range at 1.3 as an example). Give the AP unit the same SSID, the same wireless security type and passkey, but a different radio channel than the main router (selecting from the non-overlapping channels of 1, 6, and 11).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
eibgrad

eibgrad

Splendid
Feb 16, 2010
3,373
2
21,465
Be forewarned, most Netgear routers that claim to support wireless repeating use WDS! WDS is not a wifi standard, and thus incompatibilities are VERY common. For all intents and purposes, you need to be using the same firmware/hardware, which means two Netgear routers (even better, the same model). And if that wasn't bad enough, it's usually limited to WEP or NO wireless security.

So you can pretty much forget about the Netgear built-in wireless repeating option. It's not a serious solution. Netgear doesn't go out of its way to make this clear, but if you dig through their user manuals, you'll usually find it.

If you want a real wireless repeater solution, you need one that uses *universal* repeating. Instead of WDS, such a repeater uses wifi standards (G, N, etc.). So it works w/ everything, and w/o security compromises. You can either buy one standalone, or use the old Netgear WNR2000 v3 w/ dd-wrt (which offers this option).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom