Access point or repeater?

jsmoke · 29 Jul 2019 at 22:43

If you want to use an ordinary router to extend the WiFi to other parts of the house do you set it up as an access point or repeater?

This second router will be connected to the first router by ethernet and your devices should be able to connect to either router wirelessly depending on where you are in the house, ie the better signal.

bremen1874 · 30 Jul 2019 at 00:00

From the information provided...

If it's cabled you'll want AP mode.

Configure the wireless settings to match the primary router (but use different wireless channels).

How well devices will roam between the two will depend on the connected device. There'll be no management there to help steer devices.

jsmoke · 30 Jul 2019 at 00:05

bremen1874 said:
From the information provided...

If it's cabled you'll want AP mode.

Configure the wireless settings to match the primary router (but use different wireless channels).

How well devices will roam between the two will depend on the connected device. There'll be no management there to help steer devices.

So the routers don't use different ssids?

Do the devices just connect to the stronger signal or do you need to setup roaming?

bremen1874 · 30 Jul 2019 at 00:11

To make as seamless as possible use the same SSIDs.

The device will connect to the stronger signal. The problem comes when you wander from one access point to another. Your device may hang onto its initial connection when you'd really like it to have jumped. You can force things by quickly switching the wireless on the device off and on. The behaviour does vary between devices so you'd need to try it.

Avalon · 30 Jul 2019 at 21:09

Certain devices are known to not seamlessly move (well they didn’t when I last bothered to test), the main obvious culprits being iOS based.

lltfdaniel · 30 Jul 2019 at 21:16

To my knowledge look into wireless mesh networking where you use several wireless devices to share and extend the wireless signal.

Yeah look into wireless mesh networking, different from ap or repeater but will get the job done and sounds like right up your alley way regarding mesh wireless networking so it is worth a look.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network

My 2 pence.

p.s. best i can think of recommending the op to look at mesh wireless networking so yeah.

From wikipedia about wireless mesh networking.

Mesh clients are often laptops, cell phones, and other wireless devices. Mesh routers forward traffic to and from the gateways, which may, but need not, be connected to the Internet. The coverage area of all radio nodes working as a single network is sometimes called a mesh cloud. Access to this mesh cloud depends on the radio nodes working together to create a radio network. A mesh network is reliable and offers redundancy. When one node can no longer operate, the rest of the nodes can still communicate with each other, directly or through one or more intermediate nodes. Wireless mesh networks can self form and self heal. Wireless mesh networks work with different wireless technologies including 802.11, 802.15, 802.16, cellular technologies and need not be restricted to any one technology or protocol. See also mesh networking.[citation nee

Dan.