WiFi extender needed, or....?

[Master_F]

Hi,

Just bought me a new house, somewhat bigger that the old one. And I'm gonna need some better WiFi coverage. I'm also upgrading my fiber connection to 100/100 so that also has to be taken in to concideration.

I was thinking about buying the Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Router EA6300 since I'm somewhat of a Linksys fan. Don't really ask me why. But anyway. Since one won't be enough to provide coverage for the entire house I was thinking if there was some some sort of extender that works with this unit? I mean the easy way would be to simply buy two EA6300 but that seems somewhat a waste of functionality and it wouldn't be one network but more two seperate networks with the same name, sharing one DHCP server. Or is that just the way to go?

Because here comes the really embarrasing part. I normally works with this stuff. But I'm used to building large WiFi networks with controllers across huge networks at many locations so I simply don't know what to use when building solid wifi on a really small scale -and for the love of.... on whole other scale price wise!

So any suggestions?

 

[thiggins]

The Best Way To Get Whole House Wireless Coverage

You won't be happy using extenders...

 

[Master_F]

No extender

So... the solutions is as i suggested to simply buy two routers and set them up with the same SSID and code on seperate channels, two different IPs in the same subnet and then disable the DHCP server on one of them? (Simplyfied of course)

Then there would be no real interconnection between them other than that they would provide access to the same network with the same credentials. Would that be fine? I don't even know if I would need that interconnection between the APs!? I mean I don't have WiFi phones that need to be able to roam or something like that but It just seems to me that It would be nice if the network was somewhat more intelligent. I mean if they were in some kind of "master-slave" configuration that would lead you to the best connection.

 

[stevech]

One router per network. A router re-purposed as an AP is functionally an AP, not a router, no matter what it says on the screens or box.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...onvert-a-wireless-router-into-an-access-point

An AP has no WAN port or the re-purpursed device's WAN port goes unused.

It is possible to cascade routers and do use the WAN port, but not advised since this causes the need for a second set of IP addresses, a second LAN, etc. And the second router would double-NAT, need more port-forwarding, etc. Not a good idea for simplicity.

 

[Master_F]

One router one AP

Okay sorry for the confusion of terms.

It was kind of what I trying to say.

Buy two of the mentioned Linksys routers. Turn one of them into an AP only and let the other do the routing and what not.

But there is no interconnectivity between the two. They wil both grant access to the same network but they will not "be aware" of each other. But is that to be of no concern? I know some models previously launched by Cisco had that setup where you could enter the mac address of APs and the router would somehow do some "controlling". I don't know what it exactly did or if it was any good i just know the functionallity was there.

 

[jlake]

Linksys EA series routers have a feature called "bridge mode". See instructions in link below. The EA6300 supports bridge mode. It's definitely the way to go and contrary to what stevech says, you use the WAN port on the secondary router in the Linksys bridge mode instructions.

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

 

[jlake]

Okay sorry for the confusion of terms.

It was kind of what I trying to say.

Buy two of the mentioned Linksys routers. Turn one of them into an AP only and let the other do the routing and what not.

But there is no interconnectivity between the two. They wil both grant access to the same network but they will not "be aware" of each other. But is that to be of no concern? I know some models previously launched by Cisco had that setup where you could enter the mac address of APs and the router would somehow do some "controlling". I don't know what it exactly did or if it was any good i just know the functionallity was there.

Yes, buy two. Use one as your main router and put the second one in to bridge mode as an AP. You still need an ethernet cable to cascade the routers together.

 

[Master_F]

Bravo...

Okay that sounds more what I was looking for. Thanks. The whole house has CAT6 cabling so it wont be any problem to connect them.

Thanks a lot for your answers.

Have any of you tried this function with success?

 

[PrivateJoker]

Okay that sounds more what I was looking for. Thanks. The whole house has CAT6 cabling so it wont be any problem to connect them.

Thanks a lot for your answers.

Have any of you tried this function with success?

I have most of my house wired w/ Cat5e and run an Asus RT-N66U as my router & primary access point. I have it on the first floor and it connects to a large gigabit switch in a rack in the basement where all of my hardwired connections terminate into a patch panel. I run an Apple Airport Express (in what it calls "bridged" mode, "extend existing wifi network") in a spot towards the back of my house to even out the wifi indoors and also gives me a useable signal in my garage. I wanted that particular unit because it gave me another audio jack to use for AirPlay. I run both 2.4ghz SSIDs with same name & security, client devices switch seamlessly and well before they totally can't see the first AP that they were connected to (ie doesn't make a client wait to time out for no signal before it can grab the other AP). I mention this because people have different reasons for picking APs and also different levels of success in seamlessly switching between APs. I essentially disabled the Apple's 5ghz radio because I get good enough coverage on my main Asus alone. YMMV, but not at all a setup that is difficult to get running or to live with. Your wired backbone should give you a lot of placement flexibility.

Be sure to pick dissimilar (and ideally well separated) 2.4ghz channels for each AP and use 20mhz wide (narrow) channels on that band or else there will be RF overlap.

You might eventually go through your client devices and anything w/ multi stream N just put it on 5ghz, leaving 2.4ghz for older or single stream clients. Once you get it all setup it's relatively easy to test things and sort out what makes sense for you.

HTH & GL!

 

[jlake]

Okay that sounds more what I was looking for. Thanks. The whole house has CAT6 cabling so it wont be any problem to connect them.

Thanks a lot for your answers.

Have any of you tried this function with success?

Yes, I have my linksys in bridge mode. Works great. Make sure you "specify an IP address" as described in instructions.