extending wifi with another router

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theobrandt

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#190931 16-Jan-2016 20:18

sorry to ask a question that is undoubtedly covered elsewhere...somewhere!
anyway-
I have a Huawei HG569 at one end of the house. It;s in a lovely cabinet and has ethernet connections going to the other end of the house.
the wifi signal gets a bit crappy at the other end, so I'd like to enhance it.
I have another new HG569 that...I got. I also have a TP Link WR1043 ND I purchased with this in mind.

I simply would like to connect the HG569 #2 or the TP Link to the HG569 #1 by ethernet i.e. wired. and then set that second router up to allow wandering about the house with wifi devices all good. and plug TV or bluray etc into the empty LAN ports on the 2nd router.

I'm unsure if this is bridging or not, but hoped this is easy enouigh to give me a shove in the right direction.

if relevant, I have the main HG569 set to look at the UnBlock US DNS, so presumably everthing goes that way.

cheers

Theo

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#1472827 16-Jan-2016 20:19

Have you done the HG659 latest update that resolves a WiFi issue?

sbiddle

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#1472829 16-Jan-2016 20:25

Whatever device you use it should not be used as a router. Disable DHCP, set LAN IP to be a static on the same range as your network so you can get into it, set the SSID & WPA to be the same, set a different wireless channel and then plug your cable into the LAN port.

The 802.11 standard doesn't support roaming so you will occasionally find roaming between APs won't work that well - if you want roaming you'll need to buy better hardware.

freitasm

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#1473074 17-Jan-2016 11:23

Why not sell those routers and just get a D-Link Range Extender?

I have a N300 USB here (posting review tomorrow) and it just... works.

TinyTim

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#1473099 17-Jan-2016 12:15

This worked for me : http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=50&topicid=116372

Jase2985

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#1473295 17-Jan-2016 17:27

freitasm: Why not sell those routers and just get a D-Link Range Extender?

I have a N300 USB here (posting review tomorrow) and it just... works.

pretty sure they half your bandwidth dont they?

would @Sbiddle recommend one?

raytaylor

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#1473373 17-Jan-2016 20:31

See my signature for a guide below

Ray Taylor

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#1473374 17-Jan-2016 20:31

Never use an "extender"

Ray Taylor

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freitasm

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#1473375 17-Jan-2016 20:33

raytaylor: Never use an "extender"

Explain?

johnr

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#1473387 17-Jan-2016 20:56

raytaylor: Never use an "extender"

Why?

raytaylor

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#1473581 18-Jan-2016 10:41

There are a few issues

1) 99% of extenders sold are single-radio store-and-forward devices. This means they halve your speed by design.

The extender forms a WDS wifi connection to the master router, and listens for packets. When it hears a packet, it retransmits it. It cant do both at the same time (unless its a dual-radio model which most people see as more expensive and wont buy). Added to that is it will add packet delays which aside from the store-and-forward will further slow down throughput because the tcp protocol acks are run at the tcp layer and not the physical layer which the extender uses.

Typically however the speed drop is more than half. I regularly see customers buying cheap extenders from noel leemings [because they can with the farmlands or RD1 trade card :-( ] and having their 15mbit service drop to 2mbits.

2) A roaming laptop will see the extender as another base station for it to connect to. In most households that I pull them out of, I find that the extender is causing a slow down when it doesnt need to.

For our customers that call up and complain about slow internet, we have started saying the first thing they must do before we will talk to them is to switch off any extenders they have for this specific scenario:

A laptop positioned between the router and extender might see the extender with a signal of 80% and the router signal of 70%
In this scenario, the laptop will therefore connect via the extender halving its speed, where as if it connected to the master router, even with the lower signal, a higher speed would have been achievable.

3) Collision collapse

Wifi is a CSMA based protocol and so if one device starts streaming a video or downloading a large amount of data, another wifi device will slow down to a crawl. If you have multiple devices using a single residential router there is a higher chance of this happening, resulting in arguments between the kids, and an unhappy mother.

So if you are going to buy an extender, you should just run an ethernet cable to a second access point, or use a homeplug/powerline wifi extender, and then have two base stations which can spread the load. If one wifi base is suffering congestion from collision collapse, the other one will still work fine.

An extender wont act as its own proper backhauled base station and just adds more devices which can contribute to collision collapse.

So wherever I can I put in homeplugs with wifi extenders on them instead. TP-Link and tenda make some nice ones and I have started giving them to customers.

Ray Taylor

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freitasm

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#1473612 18-Jan-2016 11:02

Again, this is one side of the discussion. Some may not have the option of laying ethernet, or the requirements are different. It all depends.

sbiddle

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#1473614 18-Jan-2016 11:04

My view is that if you can't explain why an extender is bad, you shouldn't use it.

The single biggest issue with extenders is that many people use them to resolve one specific problem which is poor coverage. Where do they place the extender? In the place that has the poor coverage...

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#1473621 18-Jan-2016 11:14

sbiddle:

My view is that if you can't explain why an extender is bad, you shouldn't use it.

The single biggest issue with extenders is that many people use them to resolve one specific problem which is poor coverage. Where do they place the extender? In the place that has the poor coverage...

But this is not an extender problem. It's a perception problem. People aren't engineers.

sbiddle

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#1473624 18-Jan-2016 11:18

freitasm:

sbiddle:

My view is that if you can't explain why an extender is bad, you shouldn't use it.

The single biggest issue with extenders is that many people use them to resolve one specific problem which is poor coverage. Where do they place the extender? In the place that has the poor coverage...

But this is not an extender problem. It's a perception problem. People aren't engineers.

At CES a couple of companies with extenders had LCD screens on them showing signal strength so these could be placed in an area with strong signal.

dclegg

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#1473640 18-Jan-2016 11:28

sbiddle:

My view is that if you can't explain why an extender is bad, you shouldn't use it.

The single biggest issue with extenders is that many people use them to resolve one specific problem which is poor coverage. Where do they place the extender? In the place that has the poor coverage...

What would you recommend as the best cost effective way to extend a wifi network?

I have a friend that wants to share his Internet connection with his mother-in-law who lives in a seperate house at the back of his property. Having a wired connection to this property is not practical due to budgetary constraints. And he can't use a Powerline adapter as both houses are on different circuits.

He initially wanted to purchase a range extender, but I told him to hold off as I had heard they can have a woeful effect on throughput. He is probably able to get his ethernet connection extended to a rear bedroom which is 10 metres away from the property at the rear. My initial thoughts are for him to place a device there wired to his LAN, which will provide wifi connectivity (possibly on a SSID only used by his mother-in-law). Would a wireless access point do the job well enough here? He ideally only wants to spend around $150, but I'm not sure if this is a workable budget.

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