Extending your home network

The best way to extend a network is to add an Ethernet switch with a cable segment. You can extend Ethernet 100 meters which is about 109 yards.

You  can also use wireless repeaters or extenders.  Today, this is a wireless-to-wireless connection to the main wireless router that is connected to a cable modem.

This diagram explains this. The the laptop is in the range of the wireless router or access point. A wireless extender or repeater is used to extend the home network to a part of the home that is outside of the range of the home wireless router.

When you connect  a wireless router to an extender, there will be a loss of bandwidth. The two wireless devices can also interfere with each other.

"A better option for extending wireless coverage is to configure a secondary box as a wireless access point, with a wired connection between a LAN port on the secondary box and a LAN port on the primary box (wireless router). If Ethernet wiring is not an option, an alternative is powerline networking -- AV500 technology is inexpensive and good. Wireless extender kits consisting of a powerline adapter module (connect to the wireless router) and a wireless extender module (integrated powerline networking and wireless access point) are available." (Wikipedia). 

Rightardia has not had great luck with Ethernet over power lines. If your house takes an occasional power drop, these adapters will eventually fail.

 Ethernet Powerline adapters

Make sure you purchase and Ethernet extender or repeater that supports 802.11n. The older 802.11g extenders could not support WPA2 personal AES encryption. The preceding  is the only way that Rightardia would recommend you ever set up wireless security

The only home wireless security options that are secure are 

WPA2 personal  with AES encryption

Use at an eight digit password with some upper case letters, numbers and special  characters such as $, %, ^, or <. Better passwords are 12 -14 characters long.

In the old days, you had to have an Ethernet cable connection to extend a wireless network. Some of the new repeaters such as the Netgear WN200RPT are wireless to wireless only. These units have Ethernet ports but they are for wired connections at the distant end of the house.

You can configure the Wn200RPT with a cable connected to one of its Ethernet port by pointing your router to 192.168.1.250. However, you must have both a wireless Internet and a wired Ethernet connection up for this configuration to work.

                                 Netgear WnN2000RPT wireless repeater

An easier way to configure this device on a PC or laptop and look for a wireless
service set identifier (SSID) such as Netgear_ext in you wireless connections. Connect to it and point your browser to 192,168.250.1. You can also try the url, mywifiext.com.

Once you are connected to the repeater, the config is intuitive. You must identify the SSID on the home router's access point you need to to connect to. Recommend you use the same password on both the existing and new SSID you have just created.

The configurator  will suggest just adding _ext to the original access point's SSID. So if you existing SSID was Zucinni, you will now have an additional SSID such as Zucinni_ext.

At this point, the Netger_ext disappears because it had been overwritten and you have to connect to the new SSID you just created.

Once the wireless connection is complete, try to connect to the Internet by opening another tab on your browser.

The ports of the back of the unit are for wired Ethernet connections in the room the repeater is in


If you can connect to the Internet , the WN200RPT configurator will let you finish the config. Otherwise restart the configurator and try again. Remember this is a wireless to wireless connection. It does not connect to the main wireless router with a wired Ethernet connection. In fact, it will not work if this repeater has an Ethernet connection to the main router.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_repeater

Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/UFPYA 

 

Rightardia by Rightard Whitey of Rightardia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at rightardia@gmail.com.