Help: Extending a wireless network

toma_alimosh

Also known as "Myke Hunt"
Joined
Mar 14, 2005
Messages
4,468
Location
The North American Foundry
Car(s)
2014 Volkswagen Jetta
A friend of mine moved recently, and his new, multi-level house doesn't quite carry wireless signals very well between levels, so he asked me to help him find a solution to this problem.

Searched the net over, but didn't find all the answers, so I thought I should ask you guys.

Having to choose between a repeater and another access point, well, the repeater won't do any good if the signal is already weak and it would suck, so he's stuck with the option of making another access point (or more than one, as required). As most of you know, APs are expensive and a good alternative I've found is to turn a normal wireless router, which would be much less costly, into an access point which is linked by cable to the main router.

So here's where my doubts come in. He wants to access his network with the same security settings, etc. That way he would only have to program one auto-connect network on his laptop and PDA with the same settings. Theoretically, when he's to connect to the network, finding two access points with the same name, etc. the network adapter will choose the point with the higher, signal, right?

But here's the really tough part. He wants the two access points to do handovers ... so he can carry his PDA around the house and his wireless connection doesn't break as he moves from one extreme of the house to the other. Could that be accomplished by turning a wireless router into an additional access point and programming it the same as the first one? Or do you really need an acctual access point for handovers?
 
WRT54G v4 and below with DD_WRT firmware will most likely help him out. You can get wireless range extenders and higher gain antenae. However I'm not sure if they would be able to carry the signal far enough.

I believe that as long as the name is the same and the rest of the settings it will be able to "hand off" the signal. If his using XP's wireless zero configuration he might have problems, it only looks at network names so it can actually jump between higher signal and lower signal networks.
 
a router running dd-wrt is probably the cheapest way of creating a network like that, creating a scalable wireless network really is a question of how large is your wallet D:
 
Tomato FTW.
 
I'd go for a bigger/better antenna.
Yeah, but Tomato / DD_WRT can both boost the power of the existing antenna.

If he doesn't have a WRT54G/GL, then a better antenna would be the best first step.
 
Last edited:
Hmm, alright, I'll give the linksys router and custom firmware a try. Thanks for the suggestions.

Hope he'll agree to all this hacking and stuff ... if it will save him money, he probably will. :D
 
I agree with Viper, Tomato rocks.....though I have not tried IOS. But Tomato does everything I need, and a lot more, so I'm too lazy to try flashing something else on there.
 
I agree with Viper, Tomato rocks.....though I have not tried IOS. But Tomato does everything I need, and a lot more, so I'm too lazy to try flashing something else on there.

IOS is the operating system for routers, I was flicking through a magazine and people were comparing uptimes of their routers and the time wasn't measured in months but years!

I <3 IOS
 
IOS is the operating system for routers, I was flicking through a magazine and people were comparing uptimes of their routers and the time wasn't measured in months but years!

I <3 IOS
Is that unusual? My router would probably run for years no problem if I didn't lose power from time to time.
 
This might work if you don't have the router on show. I'm sure I've heard of some Wifi boosters that go between the router and the wireless PC though.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugvEI-TwGLU[/YOUTUBE]
 
Top