Connecting with more than one WiFi extender

Sned00 · Jul 14, 2015

MacBook Pro Mid 2012

1 netgear modem
1 netgear router
2 netgear wifi extenders

I will try and paint a picture for you to understand. 1 house and 2 studios and property. The modem and router are in the house, 1 extender in the 1st studio, 1 extender in the 2nd studio. The extender in the 2nd studio is connected to the 1st extender in the first studio. The extender in the first studio is connected to the router in the house.

Now, the extender in the 2nd studio works fine. The extender in the 1st studio, and the router in the house won't connect to the internet. They show that they're connected but no internet. I unplugged the extender in the 2nd studio and tried to connect with the router in the house and the 1st studio. Same story they connect but no internet.

boosted1g · Jul 15, 2015

What is the actual model numbers of the devices?

Wireless extenders are awful devices becase they split the bandwidth at each hop between communicating with the router and then communicating with the device. So if you started out at 150mbps, split that in half for the 1st extender and you have 75mbps max speed, split it again for the second you have 37.5 speed, and that speed is half of that as half is transmit and half is receive. This means in perfect ideal wifi environment you get a max of 19mbps or 2.5 megabytes per second. If that was not bad enough, they are also cheaply made unrealiable devices.

If you want a reliable connection you need to use access points (routers reconfigured to act as wireless/wired extensions).
Best option is to have Ethernet connection between each area.
Next best option is to use powerline ehernet adapters as the backbone if the locations are bridged together on the same power fuse box somewhere.
The next decent option is to have a device like a ubiquiti picostation to receive the wireless signal from the router (wireless bridge) that then feeds the wireless access point.

Using one of these setups will be much more reliable, and will not keep splitting your max bandwidth.

Now with all of that said, are you sure that the 2nd extender is connecting to the 1st extender and not someone else's internet? It should not be possible for the 3rd link in a chain to have a connection when the 1st 2 links of the chain it is dependent upon does not have a conection.

Sned00 · Jul 15, 2015

boosted1g :

I'm a renter and only have access to the 1st and second studio, not the main house, so I can't give you the model number of the modem and the router.

The extender in the 1st studio is hardwired and is Netgear WN2500RP

The extender in the 2nd studio is all wireless and is Netgear WN3000RP V1H2

This setup is not my ideal way of doing things but I'm only renting so it's not really my call to change everything. Just trying to make the most out of my current situation until my house is finished.

boosted1g · Jul 16, 2015

Ok then.

Doing some quick research that netgear model of the 1st extender is not designed to be hardwired to a router.
That is likely the source of your problem.
If there is a Ethernet line going from router to studio 1 then what you need there is an access point, you can make any router into an access point with just a little configuration. Using the access point will remove the bandwidth being split in half problem on that first hop.

So you for sure need a 2nd router to configure as an access point in studio 1. I would suggest a netgear wnr3500l or tp-link wdr3600. The 1st one is single band, usually around $40 USD, the second is dual band and around $55.

Once that is all setup if the wifi in your studio is really slow or does not work well then you can either use a powerline adapter to go from studio 1 to studio 2 (assuming they are on the same power circuit) and connect to a third access point, or if the powerline option is not doable then the next best option would be a ubiquiti picostation that is then plugged into an access point.

On a side note: the routers and the access points should be on different wifi channels, the non-interfering channels are 1,6,11. So if the primary router is on channel 6, then the studio 1 access point needs to be on channel 11 or 1 (whichever channel is least used by your neighbors). If you have a wifi extender on studio 2 then you don't have to worry about channel as it reuses the same as its source; now if studio 2 has an access point then it needs to not be the same channel as studio 1 to avoid interference.

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Connecting with more than one WiFi extender

Sned00

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Sned00

Reputable

boosted1g

Titan

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