Hello Adivis90
I am not super top notch when it comes to setting up home networks completely myself (let alone a hostel! lol) but I have done enough research to have found a few tricks to be useful when attaching several routers to work with one another flawlessly.
I'll outline how to perform this generally though with individual routers there are small differences in implementing everything and you will have to research how to perform all these settings yourself on your own various hardware. Though it's not too technically difficult in any case and I am sure everything you need to know can be googled. The hardest procedure will be entering the user interface for the given router and changing the various devices static IP usually.
I have 4 wireless routers as well as a standard wired LAN hub feeding my internet throughout my complete house and back yard as well. With the wireless they all overlap seamlessly so I never end up with any lull in signal anywhere within my house front or back yard. Before I added the other two wireless routers there was noticeable dead zones where my signal was just not strong enough to reach in certain areas of the house and in my back yard and garage, shop, front yard etc...
So I will try to outline the basics of my work I put in to getting my system running properly the easy way I know will work regardless of what your hardware is capable of exactly.
The first thing you will want to do is make sure all the various routers are set to the same device IP pool as the home internet routers default gateway IP whichever that may be (ex. 192.168.0.1, 192.168.1.254, 10.0.0.1, etc...) Whichever the default gateway IP is for your main internet router feeding the house. It varies company to company and though I have listed some common generically used addresses it can be something completely different. It is very important you have this information available. Usually you can list it by a simple ipconfig/all command in a command prompt window or by accessing the information directly from the router in questions setup interface (usually the number you enter into your browser to access this to begin with
). But I digress. Again this information and how to obtain it is all readily available online.
You will need to make sure to set all your other slave routers to a fixed IP within this range. I like to manually assign a specific IP to each individual router as it is easier to access any of your devices at any given time for maintenance, to change settings or what have you. An example of this is for the main ISP router as the default gateway of 192.168.1.1. My first attached router is set with a fixed IP of 192.168.1.10. The second device I have a fixed IP of 192.168.1.20. Third will be assigned 192.168.1.30. Any additional device (by device I am meaning router/AP's here) attached can be assigned a fixed IP in increments of tens or really any number sequence you prefer... I just find doing this it's effective to name each of my routers an easily remembered IP for accessibility later. This way whenever I feel the need to do anything to the settings of any specific router I know what it is called and can access it anywhere I happen to be in the house. I already know my main living room box is 1, the bedroom is 10, the garage is 30 and so on. Again the nice feature is you can access any router from any given device (as in PC this time) within your entire intranet. As far as security purposes gos in your case this may not be ideal for your use but there are ways to implement security further you can research to further limit this behavior if it is required. Just be sure to have decent passwords on all of your router/AP's regardless of what else you decide to do as the generic admin - password router setting defaults are by no means the most secure (I'm sure you are aware of this btw). This should be done in any case.
You will also need to disable DHCP on all the connected routers you wish to add to the main router in order for this to work correctly. It is advisable to change these settings on each of your individual routers before connecting them to the main router or network to decrease confusion or any errors from occurring during the procedure.
Your incoming internet router is acting as the main device for keeping track of all the various devices which are currently able to connect to the internet through it therefore it is the only one that you need to have DHCP enabled on. It will be able to keep track of all the various devices wired or wireless accessing any point of the given routers within your network automatically.
With this done it is as simple as wiring each of your devices (again routers/AP's) from a LAN port off the main ISP router to another LAN port on any of your given router, AP's in any sequence and they will all be able to pass the signal and see each other as well as all of your connected devices will be able to detect each other and it will ensure your shared storage, printers, homegroup etc... will all be able to be accessed at any point within the network by any other given device.
It is very important that you do not connect any of the add on routers by the WAN port for this to work correctly on most devices... though there are some newer ones where this is not an issue and it can be researched if this is possible with all or any of your devices or not... the foolproof method that I know will work is to connect to only LAN ports. Though this is not too critical of an issue usually usually unless you have a lot of wired devices in one given area and you need all the LAN ports available, but in that case you can just get another wired hub and attach it if required.
So this handles the basic intranet infrastructure and now you have to get all the wireless working in sequence. You have a dual band router so there is one slight difference in your case but really all the various rules carry over regardless. This is as simple as naming all the SSID's the exact same as one another. except for your fast 5GHz connection that you should designate a slightly different SSID to differentiate it from the others so it is not confusing your faster devices which may also be dual band capable from receiving the usually stronger but slower 2.4GHz signal instead by default. An example could be MySSID2.4GHZ and MySSID5GHZ. This way when you want to utilize your A/C faster connection for equipped devices you can get it delivered to them without the annoyance of dropping off to the slower transfer 2.4GHz N band or slower.
With that done now you just have to set each routers security settings to exactly the same standard and exact same key used for all. Usually WPA2-PSK[AES] though this can very as well. If one of your routers is incapable of the newest most secure encryption then I recommend replacing it rather then falling back your whole network to a highly vulnerable WEP standard if at all possible. In order for the wireless to be seamless and a one set affair for access to your various mobile devices no matter where you happen to be within range this is required. The downside to this is that all the encryption standards have to be compatible for this to work. Though you shouldn't have any problem with this as the devices you listed are newer.
The last thing at this point in order for everything to work as good as possible is to set your wireless channels for every device so that they are as far from overlapping each other as possible. Usually at least a 3 channel gap is desirable. Also it should be taken in to consideration which channels have the majority of congestion in your surrounding area due to other peoples wireless networks. This becomes more challenging when you have more than 3 signals broadcasting the same SSID on the 2.4GHz band for your own wireless, though it is reasonably doable. I have my main access point broadcasting central in the living room and one access point in the bedroom on one end of my home as well as one in the far utility room on the other side of my home as well as one out in the garage in the backyard. So in my case as an example I determined which channel was the least congested to set my central wifi router (ch-1). My bedroom router I set as far away as possible from it (ch-11). My utility room which is a bit farther from the main unit I have is on (ch-6) and my garage in the backyard which is a good deal away from my main router is set to (ch-3). In this way my devices and routers don't get confused and no matter where I am in the house my devices can automatically find the best signal to connect to effortlessly without something going wrong. I have yet to experience any issues with this setup. Even watching netflix on an ipad or kindle while traveling around my house one area to another it never skips a beat.
If you end up getting more fast 5GHz routers later the same steps can be applied to them as well.
So that comes to the conclusion of getting them all to work... there are other things that you might find useful if you do a little more research into it yourself. Such as adding another dedicated wireless router which can be attached through its WAN port to your main router keeping it separated from the existing home network having its own complete different access to the internet for guests so they can't go snooping through your private home or business intranet. The same exact steps can also be applied for a secondary guest network if you wanted to get elaborate and add a whole lot more routers. Not sure how this will effect traffic when your talking about more than 20 connected users streaming video or what exactly your internet speed requirements should be for that kind of demand... but those are other topics. LOL
If you wanted a little more security you could as well use a secondary router through it's WAN port off the main router to add another gateway tier network which is even further embedded from the net as a more secure secondary network if needed. This kind of setup can see everything connected before it but nothing before it on the standard intranet tier can see it in most cases or pass information into it without further security protocols being accessed in order to communicate with it at all.
There are quit a few other things that may be even more useful to you for your specific needs which I didn't mention and as I said I am no authority on the subject. My limited understanding of networks and networking devices is due to years of troubleshooting my own issues and have come about through that research to fulfill my various needs only. There are, I am sure, plenty of people who can hopefully tell you how to get it done, maybe in a far different way then I have outlined more expertly.
And if it's better then by all means use it... I may learn something new as well!
But I can tell you from my experience this will work and fix any kind of misbehaved devices not playing nice with each other that might be troubling you.
Hope this can help you out if any.
If you have any further questions ask and I will help out with what I can if someone else doesn't get to you first.
-John
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram