What's the best way to extend my network?

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greasy dave

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Nov 30, 2009
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Hi,

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum. Also apologies in advance if I'm not using the correct terms.

To business: I've got a standard sort of internet set up - a modem/ wi-fi router(is that what it's called) which provides wifi and cable connections. This works fine. However, I'd like to extend the wi fi coverage to a different part of the house - which is down a floor and just out of range of the existing wi-fi.

Up till now I've had a cable running from the modem to this room and connected the pc to the cable.

Now I'd like to be able to use wi fi in this room.

I sort of imagined that I'd be able to buy a box that I'd be able to plug the cable from the wi-fi router into and it'd send out a wi-fi signal. I've tried googling such a concept and not found any reference to such a thing. All I've found are wi-fi extenders.

My understanding of the wi-fi extender is that it takes an existing wi fi signal and boosts it out - it doesn't plug into a cable at all but re-broadcasts wi-fi coverage, as it were? Is that correct?

I could possibly move the modem/ router so that the wi-fi penetrates deeper into the existing space - and then try to extend it with an extender..? But how strong a signal do I have to get from the original router to be able to extend it? I'd hate to buy an extender and then find I don't have a strong enough signal for it to work.

My prefered solution would be to plug a box into the cable downstairs and let the box provide wi-fi coverage. Does such a box exist? Would setting this up be more difficult and complex than using an extender?

What would you recommend as my best way forward?

Thanks, in advance.
 
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I might be slightly off on the exact method and there might be a minor mistake here and there but it can be done with regular off the shelf hardware from your local store. You can unplug the PC from the wired connection downstairs, purchase a standard off the shelf wifi router and plug that in and use that as an secondary access point. What you'll need to do:

1) plug in the new wifi router.
2) make the SSID something different (as in yourname-downstairs)
3) DISABLE DHCP on the new wifi router (you can't have two DHCP assigners on the same network - the cable modem/router already handles this)
4) manually assign it an IP address - for example if your cable modem/router has an IP address of 192.168.254.254, assign it one down...
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Rookie_MIB

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Jul 27, 2013
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I might be slightly off on the exact method and there might be a minor mistake here and there but it can be done with regular off the shelf hardware from your local store. You can unplug the PC from the wired connection downstairs, purchase a standard off the shelf wifi router and plug that in and use that as an secondary access point. What you'll need to do:

1) plug in the new wifi router.
2) make the SSID something different (as in yourname-downstairs)
3) DISABLE DHCP on the new wifi router (you can't have two DHCP assigners on the same network - the cable modem/router already handles this)
4) manually assign it an IP address - for example if your cable modem/router has an IP address of 192.168.254.254, assign it one down (192.168.254.253) - note that your numbers may be different (like 192.168.1.x, or 10.0.0.x)
5) point the new router default gateway ip address to the cable modem/router.
6) enable the wifi connection on the new router (may be set to ON as default)
7) plug your downstairs PC network into one of the lan ports on the new wifi router

At this point if I'm not mistaken you should be able to use wifi to connect to the internet using the upstairs, or if you're downstairs just connect to the downstairs wifi. Both should work fine.
 
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