Hello,

I am having a nightmare time trying to boost the wifi around a friends home.

The house is made very solidly. Thick solid concrete floor between ground and 1st floor. Walls are very solid too. At the top of his spiralled staircase is an open area where the desktop pc sits in a corner connected to a wireless adsl router. This router is not strong enough to pierce the floor or walls for the majority of the home so it basically covers the upstairs providing only low or poor wifi signals downstairs in the living areas.

So, what I thought I'd do is buy 2 access points and use them in repeater mode.
I bought 2 x TP-Link TL-WA901ND access points.

My problem is that after configuring the repeaters correctly (I think) they appear to be doing nothing to boost the signal and the laptop(s) are still getting their primary signal from the adsl router upstairs.
I put one repeater at the base of the stairs and another in the kitchen/family area. I connected through wifi the first repeater to the adsl router upstairs and the second repeater I connected through wifi to the first repeater to create a sort of stepping/shuffling of the signal from the top floor, down to the stairs and into the rest of the downstairs home.

The pc upstairs has been set with a staic ip as to has the adsl wifi router, repeaters, and clients. All devices are in the same subnet.

I read on the TP-Link website's FAQ's for creating a repeater environment that the security must be set to WEP or the repeaters wont connect. BUT, I feel this an outdated FAQ article because WEP should not be used on Wireless N hardware, which these access points are.

The adsl wifi router does not support WEP at all as a security option so it was impossible for me to set the adsl router and the two repeaters on the same security standard unless I went to WPA/PSK AES for example but that contradicts the FAQ article which I suspect is oudated.

I was wondering, is it possible to offer a wifi AP without it having it's LAN port connected via ethernet back to the adsl router or can you only have a wifi repeater for this solution?

Now this should be a basic thing to set up. I have never had such a rough time so any steps/tips/tricks are greatly appreciated. I have already spent a total of 5 hours trying multiple configurations.

Thank you,
Steve.