Using an extra Linksys E4200 as accesspoint; wireless speed goes down?

[Sir Dan Baker]

Good morning,

I have used a Linksys E4200 (ip-adressrange 192.168.1.101-149) for a couple of years now and I have always been very pleased with it. But as it sits in the central closet where the electricyty meter is housed the wireless range is not reaching all the spots I would like it to reach (attic and terrace).

I have a second E4200 (V2) and want to use it as an accesspoint, so I have put it in bridge mode, put the cable from the first one into a lan port gave it a static ip-adress outside the dhcp-range of the first one (why??) (192.168.1.200) and now all functions ok but the speed of the second router is roughly half of what the first one puts out wirelessly. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong or why this is caused?

P.S. the wireless speed of the first router remains ok, just as it was before installing the second one.

Thanks in advance

Dan.

 

[thiggins]

What do mean "put it into bridge mode"?
How are you measuring the wireless speed?

 

[Sir Dan Baker]

Is has a function called 'bridge-mode' of which the usermanual states: "a usefull feature when you want to use your router as an extra accesspoint in an existing network'.

I measured the wireless speeds 5 or 6 times using my iPhone 4S/ iPad 2 (speedtest app) and my laptop using speedtest.net

Thanks for your thoughts on this.


Dan.

 

[Sir Dan Baker]

Hmm very strange, eveywhere I read about this construction people say that you have to plug the cable coming from the first router into the second one in a lan-port in stead of the wan port.... and the usermanual just says: put the cable into the wan-port of the second router.
I'll have another go then when i get home tonight, see if that fixes the problem. Also the usermanual doesn't state that you have to use an ip-adress outside the normal dhcp-range...

definitely a couple of things to try and come back here afterwards.

Dan

 

[thiggins]

If you use the "bridge mode" built into the router, I think you connect via its WAN port.
If you leave the router in its normal mode and follow the instructions here, you connect the converted router via a LAN port.

Be sure that you have the two routers set to different non overlapping channels
(1, 6, 11)

Be sure you are connecting to the band you want. Change the SSIDs to be different in each router so that you know exactly where your client is connecting.

Be sure the wireless mode settings are the same on both routers.

 

[Sir Dan Baker]

Thanks for the help, indeed this did fix the problem.

1. connect to the wanport of the second E4200 when it is in bridge-mode.
2. acquire a normal ip-adress for the second router within the DHCP-range of the first router.
3. steer clear of overlapping channels.

The last part I do not understand completely, what to do with this, somewhere on this website I read that putting the router in a dedicated 20Mhz mode improves range and throughput, is that correct?

Thanks,

Dan.

 

[thiggins]

The last part I do not understand completely, what to do with this, somewhere on this website I read that putting the router in a dedicated 20Mhz mode improves range and throughput, is that correct?

You want each access point on a different non-overlapping channel so that each has its full share of bandwidth. If you put multiple access points on the same channel and they are in range of each other, bandwidth will be split between them. This eliminates / reduces part of the benefit of using multiple access points.

For more about 40 MHz mode, see #5 in this article.

 

[Sir Dan Baker]

Thanks for all your help Tim, in the end I decided against this contruction. Somehow at some point the second router would not respond for a couple of seconds when opening a webpage or have a huge drop in a download (all wireless) so I sold both and bought an ASUS RT-N66U Dark Knight with a much better coverage from the same location as my original Linksys E4200V1. I did tweak the poweroutput to 500mw as seen in another thread on these forums.
I am now able to simultaneously stream wireless HD youtube in the garden with both iPhones 4S, iPad 2nd gen and a laptop at the same time, that was the goal in the end, better coverage in the garden.

Thanks again I hope this thread helps other people in their struggle for better wireless coverage.

Dan.

 

[jlake]

The instructions for the linksys bridge mode are in link below.

http://kb.linksys.com/Linksys/GetAr...tting_up_the_Linksys_E4200_in_bridge_mode.xml

The linksys firmware has a bug that sometimes causes it not to set up properly if you select "obtain IP address automatically". So you have to configure manually and "specify an IP address" when configuring bridge mode.

You enter the IP address, examples, 192.168.1.2, subnet mask 255.255.255.0, default gateway 192.168.1.1 and you must enter 1 DNS 8.8.8.8. The instructions say you must use unique ssid's. And it must be connected to the WAN port as thiggins stated earlier. See instructions for further details.

I'm just adding this info in case someone else reads this thread.

Edit: the LAN to LAN cascade is somewhat of a dinosaur now that linksys has added bridge mode to most of its new routers. Bridge mode allows you to forward ports to clients connected to the bridge mode router. The inability to forward ports to devices connected to the secondary cascaded router (in a LAN to LAN cascade) was a major drawback for many people. Bridge mode solves that.