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Router as Wi-Fi Repeater/Extender

ziloo

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2006
Messages
990
Location
in the basement
Hello Folks,

I have a router on the 1st floor and my laptop on
the 2nd floor...located at point A... has poor
reception. They tell me I can place an old router
on the second floor to boost the weak signal from
the first floor.

Now my question is:... If I place the 2nd router at
point A which already has a poor reception, how
would the 2nd router help? If the signal was
already weak for the laptop, wouldn't it be weak
for the 2nd router to be detected? I have checked
other locations on the 2nd floor, and there is no
better reception anywhere!

Thank you for your comments

ziloo :giggle:
 
To use a standard router as a wireless access point, usually you need to hard wire it (ethernet cable) to your main router.

There are also dedicated wifi extender/repeaters. They work pretty well if you can find a power outlet about halfway between your router and laptop.
 
I use cheap range extenders not only as repeaters, but also as Wifi adapters for systems having only an ethernet connection. Very useful when you have a roll-around rack system that you don't want to hardwire to ethernet. An example:
 

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Is there any locations on the second floor that will allow you to run a wire from router #1? If you can get a wire up there then you can set the second router as a Wireless Access Point and reception from the rest of the second floor may be better. But, yes, router #2 has to be connected by wire. I used Cat6 cable.

If running a wire just won't work then you can look into wireless radio repeaters. But you may have to upgrade your router #1 also. Some have had success with using the electrical wiring of the house but there are a lot of factors that may make that less than ideal. It's worth looking into. New house? Old house? Wood? Metal? Glass? What else is in the way between floors? Will upgrading equipment give stronger signal? Etc.

Seaken
 
If I place the 2nd router at
point A which already has a poor reception, how
would the 2nd router help? If the signal was
already weak for the laptop, wouldn't it be weak
for the 2nd router to be detected?
Your concern is valid, it won't help. A repeater/extender will help only if you can place it somewhere with better signal than where the laptop is.

For this particular case, depending on a number of factors like where your router is, it might be better to place the repeater/extender on the same floor with the router, for example directly below the office of second floor

Now I don't know how much you want to spend or how much freedom you have to do things in the house, but a modern expandable solution is a mesh, for example
https://www.tp-link.com/us/mesh-wifi/
or
 
Last edited:
Mesh is really the way to go nowadays. I kinda did a weird MESH back in the day with 10 or so WRT-54g's. Still use a couple for 802.11B just heavy mac filtering/machine id/MAC (OpenWRT) and only on when I need the access points for earlier adapters that dont support G/N. Gotta love their range when maxed with nice antennas (+15db). ;)
 
If you are using 5GHz WiFi, it might be worth trying 2.4GHz as it can have better range through walls.

Many modern routers can be configured to have separate WiFi SSIDs for each band.

I like the GL-iNet devices for flexibility for stuff like Chuck is talking about.

Stock firmware is based on OpenWRT with a simplified web config layer on top.

You can still get to the OpenWRT Luci config, or just replace the firmware with a real OpenWRT install.

I believe I've been able to do everything I've needed from the stock firmware, though.

My main router at the shop is a GL-MT1300. It was configured to get internet from the neighbors WiFi and provide ethernet and my own WiFi SSIDs from that.

And some GL-MT300N-V2 units to use as client bridges for vintage ethernet clients where needed.
 
Just get a couple of powerline ethernet adapters and forget the wireless nonsense of range extenders and "meshes".

Plug one brick near the first floor router and into the router. Plug the second brick wherever on the second floor you want the second router and pair the powerline adapters and plug in the second router.

It uses the house mains wiring as the ethernet connection, which works well in almost all cases. Make sure you plug the adapters directly into the wall outlet and not into a power strip or extension cord, because they won't work.
 
Hello Folks,

I have a router on the 1st floor and my laptop on
the 2nd floor...located at point A... has poor
reception. They tell me I can place an old router
on the second floor to boost the weak signal from
the first floor.

Now my question is:... If I place the 2nd router at
point A which already has a poor reception, how
would the 2nd router help? If the signal was
already weak for the laptop, wouldn't it be weak
for the 2nd router to be detected? I have checked
other locations on the 2nd floor, and there is no
better reception anywhere!

Thank you for your comments

ziloo :giggle:
I have some of the TP-Link range extenders, and they do help even if the signal is poor. Perhaps they have better receivers, or antennas, or something else, but they help. If the signal is really bad, then you could try Power Line extenders, but again may have issues due to USA wiring. TP-Link do one that comes out as WiFi.
 
I have a TP-Link powerhome or w/e they call it powerline networking kit. I used it when I first moved in to have internet in the garage. Even with this super old wiring , and 2 meters, and the garage being over 100ft away from the house, still got around 40mbps. The latency wasnt bad at all like 30ms. They are pretty nice in a pinch.
 
Thank you again for the advise!!!

Now out of curiosity....can we connect an antenna to
somewhere (???) on the laptop to boost the wi-fi reception?

ziloo :giggle:
 
Thank you again for the advise!!!

Now out of curiosity....can we connect an antenna to
somewhere (???) on the laptop to boost the wi-fi reception?

ziloo :giggle:
That depends on the laptop and how much butchery you want to do. If you use a Powerline the you can just run a cable but then you laptop becomes wired. Most I have seen have the Wireless interface on a small PCI or PCI-E card like this...


1662561422847.png

You can see the antenna sockets ringed in red just adjacent to the top of the card. Normally these have wire antennas on them, but you can buy pig-tails that clip on like these


1662561519981.png

which you could perhaps use the install an external antenna, also available on E-Bay. Just make sure the socket type matches. Many router antennas are "reverse SMA" which is designed stop you boosting your WiFi but given the number of leads and antennas available on E-Bay its pointless...
 
I have some laptops where the built-in wifi card has terrible reception. Many times I got better results by using a USB dongle and disabling the built-in module.

Seaken
 
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