My wireless repeater isn’t working

Jul 30, 2018
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Who knows how to configure routers?

The gist: we have a fios quantum gateway router that only produces enough signal for half of my house. I have 2 powerline adapters, so one is attached to an Ethernet cable from the LAN port on the fios router, and at the other end I have a few-years-old Linksys router, which has an Ethernet cable connecting it to the powerline via the LAN port. The Linksys router is on repeater mode but it’s still only broadcasting the WiFi network associated with that router, not the main Verizon network, so in spots where there’s overlap it will stay on whichever network I was closest to last even if in that spot the other network is producing a stronger signal. So in essence, I have to manually switch networks whenever I walk across the house. How do I configure the Linksys router to broadcast the same network as the Verizon router (or vice versa, whichever is easier)? The Linksys router doesn’t let you do much with the setting once it’s on repeater mode, so I should think it’s configured correctly.

Tl;dr: help me use an old router as a wireless repeater, because I set it up but it’s not working.
 
Solution
It will stay connected to the wrong network even if the SSID are the same. You can just set the tplink to the same ssid and password. You don't actually want the tplink in repeater mode you want it in AP mode. The repeater mode is used when the connection to the main router is wifi. Just having this option on will degrade your bandwidth so it is best to have off when you are not actually using the function,

The roaming problem is not the routers the problem is the end device. Unlike a cellphone where the network controls the end device WiFi the end device decides. The end devices really have no way to know there is another "better" network because they are using their radio for communication. They only look for...
It will stay connected to the wrong network even if the SSID are the same. You can just set the tplink to the same ssid and password. You don't actually want the tplink in repeater mode you want it in AP mode. The repeater mode is used when the connection to the main router is wifi. Just having this option on will degrade your bandwidth so it is best to have off when you are not actually using the function,

The roaming problem is not the routers the problem is the end device. Unlike a cellphone where the network controls the end device WiFi the end device decides. The end devices really have no way to know there is another "better" network because they are using their radio for communication. They only look for connections when the signal level falls below a certain level.

No real way to fix this. You can change the level the end device searches but then you run the risk of it hopping back and forth taking small outages each time.
 
Solution