AppleTV - Airplay with WiFi Extender ?

aerobyravol said:

I live in a several flour house and needed a WiFi extender to reach all my house with my iGears and other WiFi enabled devices.

So basically, I have a "root" WiFi Network of SSID myWiFi in the basements.

I then have a WiFi Extender (Netgear) that connects to the myWiFi network and extends it to another Network of SSID myWiFi_Ext.

So here's my question: can I make sure my AppleTV (which will be connected to let's say myWiFi Network) will also be seen by iGears connected to myWiFi_Ext ?

I mean, within my home, will any iDevice be able to Airplay on my AppleTV, regardless the network it connects to (MyWiFi or MyWiFi_Ext)?

Thanks for your clever answers.

Click to expand...

WiFi Extender? Not sure what that is.. Normally, people will just put another access point somewhere else in the house. The SSID remains the same on both devices and the Access Point is set to bridge mode. This is what's called a "Roaming Network".

See here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4260 The instructions are for Apple devices, but you'll get the gist of it.

aerobyravol said:

Thank you very much for your answer.
So, I should have purchased a second Airport device, rather than that bloody extender (Netgear WN3000RP).

There's one thing I don't understand in this picture (courtesy Apple):

Image

Why the hell do you connect the various routers each other via physical cables? I mean, the intent to have this roaming network is to cover lots of room space - so you don't intend to have them connected by wires, right?

There might be something I miss...

Click to expand...

I have an Airport Extreme and a Time Capsule. I have the TC connected to the modem and the AE fed wireless to the 1 bedroom feeding 2 Apple TV's (one in each bedroom). I did this because I have a ridicules long pass code for my network and too hard to put it in the Apple TV's
I bet Apple shows them wired so the AE's have a better signal to them and if you have a big house, you'll have great wireless signal in the whole house this way.

aerobyravol said:

Thank you very much for your answer.
So, I should have purchased a second Airport device, rather than that bloody extender (Netgear WN3000RP).

There's one thing I don't understand in this picture (courtesy Apple):

Image

Why the hell do you connect the various routers each other via physical cables? I mean, the intent to have this roaming network is to cover lots of room space - so you don't intend to have them connected by wires, right?

There might be something I miss...

Click to expand...

i will give my perspective based on the way i have mine now which is wireless from main extreme to a 2nd, then to an express. it seems that if they are wirelessly connected, its using that wifi bandwidth to communicate and thus sacrificing the wifi speed. I tried to do it wired and had issues, but i might take this apple article and try it again per their instructions as i have cat 6 running to each floor with an 8 port switch, so i could hang the express and extreme off each of those.

I agree with the above, as far as using an Airport Express as an access point. I did find slowed responsiveness. Yes probably due to the bandwidth being used for 2-way communication between the AEBS and AE. However, in a situation where you are getting weak signal from the main router and a wired network is not possible, it is still a very usable configuration.

OP, what you're actually trying to do is create an extended network, not a roaming network. A roaming network utilizes multiple base stations daisy-chained to one another via Cat5/5e/6. Essentially, this allows each base station's wi-fi to operate at full throughput.

In an extended network, the secondary wifi access points don't have a physical cable to establish the connection to the main wifi access point, so the wi-fi is pulling double duty: maintaining a connection while simultaneously transferring data over that connection. As a result, the throughput is halved. So if you have a 150Mbps wifi connection on your main router, then the remote wifi points are only capable of 75Mbps max...and that is if the two access points are relatively close to one another. When the distances between the main access point and the extenders is large, you may be looking at only 30-40% of the original throughput. But, as others have mentioned, sometimes that's the only available option.

aerobyravol said:

Thank you very much for your answer.
So, I should have purchased a second Airport device, rather than that bloody extender (Netgear WN3000RP).

There's one thing I don't understand in this picture (courtesy Apple):

Image

Why the hell do you connect the various routers each other via physical cables? I mean, the intent to have this roaming network is to cover lots of room space - so you don't intend to have them connected by wires, right?

There might be something I miss...

Click to expand...

In a roaming network the 2 base stations are connected with a lan cable. So you have full throughput. You can also have as someone else mentioned above, an extended network where you don't need the cable but the throughput is also halved. The best way with with the cable. Also you would have a different wifi channel on the 2nd base station. When you walk around the house (roam) with your iDevice it will automatically switch to the base station with the best wifi signal. If you have an Airport Extreme or Express as your main router, adding the 2nd Apple device is super easy. I have two Airport Extremes myself and they work well with each other.

Out of curiosity, what is the brand of your main router? Is it also a Netgear? When I've used non-Apple routers & wi-fi extenders in the past, I've always set them up using the same SSID, password, and channel. When set up in this fashion, your device should automatically connect to the stronger signal. You shouldn't have any issues with AirPlay like this.

FWIW, Apple truly does make this easy with their Airport Extreme & Express. I have 3 Extremes and one Express in my home. Two extremes are connected via Cat6, creating a roaming network. The third AirPort Extreme is set up to wirelessly extend that roaming network, because there was simply no way to run Cat 6 to that part of the house. And the little Airport Express simply connects to the wireless network, but does not extend it -- it's connected to a pair of powered speakers. The setup works flawlessly, and I get a minimum 40-50Mbps throughput even on the wirelessly extended portion of the network. Plenty fast for streaming video & music all over the house. If you're having trouble with your Netgear setup, I'd highly recommend Apple's kit.