Router as Access Points

[n8236]

I've never done this before, so I'm not sure if this is possible. I have two routers and I would like to make my 2nd router into an Access Point to extend my wireless network.

From what I read and found on the web, the only way to extend my network is to connect the two routers via wire. Is there a way to do this w/o the wire so the two routers talk to each other to extend my network?

Thanks 🙂

 

[ChrisA]

I've never done this before, so I'm not sure if this is possible. I have two routers and I would like to make my 2nd router into an Access Point to extend my wireless network.

From what I read and found on the web, the only way to extend my network is to connect the two routers via wire. Is there a way to do this w/o the wire so the two routers talk to each other to extend my network?

Thanks 🙂

The user manual for the Apple Airport base stations explain how to do this. You can download the PDF files from the apple.com web site support section. They describ both ways with and without wire. In the unwired mode it really becomes a "repeater" not an access point.

If there is any way to run wire this is the way to go repeaters use up so much bandwidth

Another way to extend the area is to use just one access point but fit it with an external antena. Externals can have better gain and can be placed in a closer to optimal location. They also make antenas with specialized patterens that might be usfull

 

[balamw]

Also depends on the router you have.

In particular the Linksys WRT54g family has lots of third party firmware to enable exactly the kind of thing you are looking to do.

I've got one hooked up to the Verizon provided router as a WAP running openwrt. I had initially planned on using it as a wireless client to the router and plugging the boxes in my family room into that.

B

 

[rogersmj]

I think you're mixing terminology, n8236. Extending your wireless network would be wiring an additional router to the main one and then configuring it as a wireless access point that passes DHCP and firewall duties through to the main router. This can be done relatively easily with any router, but it does mean wiring the secondary router to the primary one.

The other thing which you may be talking about is creating a wireless bridge. This involves connecting one router to another via a wireless network, effectively creating an "island" wired network around your secondary router. This is not possible with many off-the-shelf routers, but as balamw noted you can do this with third-party firmware for the Linksys WRT54G series. I have such firmware on my router and have taken advantage of the capability before. The issue you need to be aware of with this configuration is that the secondary router cannot (last I checked) rebroadcast the signal it is connected to. It can be either a client or an access point, but not both.