Cascading router help

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danageis

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Apr 23, 2014
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I have two identical routers that I bought and have set up in a cascade to help with Wifi coverage in my apartment.

I am pretty sure I have everything set up as it should be; I have one router (primary) connected directly to my modem, and the secondary is in another room with lan-lan connection. The secondary is setup with a different ip, dhcp disabled etc. They are both broadcasting the same ssid, but set to run on different channels, which was advice I read about cascading online.

My problem is that none of my devices seem to want to connect to the stronger signals when they're closer to the stronger signal. My laptop in the room with the second router still is getting choppy reception like it did running off the old router, but when I disable the radio of the first router the signal is very strong coming from the second router and I have no issues, but only when it is forced to connect to the second router.

I think the problem might be that my apartment is not large enough to ever fully drop the WiFi, it just gets atrociously slow but never disconnects completely.

Is there anything I can do about this? Is my setup correct?

Would it make the most sense to have each router broadcast a separate ssid and switch between them manually in each room, or is there a good way to make sure my devices switch to the stronger signal automatically?
 
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I was thinking this was going to be your standard question of how do I run 2 routers but it appears you already have everything setup correctly.

You can read lots about you problem it is discussed under a much broader topic called "ip mobility" that even worries about seamless roaming when the IP address needs to changes.

Unfortunately you are kinda stuck with consumer grade equipment. You run the same SSID and you get the problem you see or you run different SSID and then you manually have to change them which some people do not want to deal with.
There is a setting in most wireless enddevice nics called roaming aggressiveness that sets the level the device starts to look for a new device to connect to. You can get the reverse...
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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I was thinking this was going to be your standard question of how do I run 2 routers but it appears you already have everything setup correctly.

You can read lots about you problem it is discussed under a much broader topic called "ip mobility" that even worries about seamless roaming when the IP address needs to changes.

Unfortunately you are kinda stuck with consumer grade equipment. You run the same SSID and you get the problem you see or you run different SSID and then you manually have to change them which some people do not want to deal with.
There is a setting in most wireless enddevice nics called roaming aggressiveness that sets the level the device starts to look for a new device to connect to. You can get the reverse problem and it constantly hop back and forth so it is quite a challenge. If your routers have the ability you might try to turn down the wireless radio power so you get less overlap and maybe convince the device to change at a better point.
 
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danageis

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Apr 23, 2014
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I haven't been able to find too much help looking for "ip mobility", but I am kind of new to all of this. These are the advanced settings described on my router page, but I'm having a tough time figuring out which to change/what they would actually do. Any advice on how I might be able to change these to get my devices to switch networks more consistently when changing rooms in the apartment?

Transmit Power - Here you can specify the transmit power of this device. You can select High, Middle or Low which you would like. High is the default setting and is recommended.

Beacon Interval - The beacons are the packets sent by this device to synchronize a wireless network. Beacon Interval value determines the time interval of the beacons. You can specify a value between 40-1000 milliseconds. The default value is 100.

RTS Threshold - Here you can specify the RTS (Request to Send) Threshold. If the packet is larger than the specified RTS Threshold size, this device will send RTS frames to a particular receiving station and negotiate the sending of a data frame. The default value is 2346.

Fragmentation Threshold - This value is the maximum size determining whether packets will be fragmented. Setting the Fragmentation Threshold too low may result in poor network performance since excessive packets. 2346 is the default setting and is recommended. (This value for the mode of 11N series can not be changed)

DTIM Interval - This value determines the interval of the Delivery Traffic Indication Message (DTIM). You can specify the value between 1-255 Beacon Intervals. The default value is 1, which indicates the DTIM Interval is the same as Beacon Interval.

Enable WMM - WMM function can guarantee the packets with high- priority messages being transmitted preferentially. It is strongly recommended enabled.

Enable Short GI - This function is recommended for it will increase the data capacity by reducing the guard interval time.

Enable AP Isolation - Isolate all connected wireless stations so that wireless stations cannot access each other through WLAN. This function will be disabled if WDS/Bridge is enabled.
 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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The only one that does any good is transmit power. You never really know, you set it too low and you will not get enough signal to be usable even close to the router.

The other settings are in the ends device nic cards. roaming aggressiveness is what it is called in many.
 
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