Extend Wireelss Range

littledave

littledave

littledave

Associate
Joined
25 Dec 2002
Posts
626
Location
Brighton
Looking to tidy up my network and extend the wireless range.

Currently on the Virgin 50MB with the supplied Netgear WNR2000.

The WNR200 is connected to a Gigabit Netgear GS605 which feeds 3 pc's and another GS605 in the living room for the PS3, Blueray, Wii.

I have real trouble upstairs with wireless coverage when using iPhones, or laptops.

There is a wired Cat 5 upstairs from the GS605 which I thought I could unplug from the PC and plug another wireless router in, to extend the range, then plug the PC back into this router.

Maybe there is a better router than the supplied Virgin one that I could upgrade too.

Any thoughts please.
 
littledave said:
There is a wired Cat 5 upstairs from the GS605 which I thought I could unplug from the PC and plug another wireless router in, to extend the range, then plug the PC back into this router.

Maybe there is a better router than the supplied Virgin one that I could upgrade too.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure, but if you swap the default Virgin router, they might refuse to provide support.

Adding another wireless thing upstairs should help, but I don't think it's a wireless router you want, that would confuse your network, I think it's called a wireless network extender (too tired to Google now) but it will pick up your signal and rebroadcast it.

Rgds
 
radderfire said:
I'm not sure, but if you swap the default Virgin router, they might refuse to provide support.

Adding another wireless thing upstairs should help, but I don't think it's a wireless router you want, that would confuse your network, I think it's called a wireless network extender (too tired to Google now) but it will pick up your signal and rebroadcast it.

Rgds
Click to expand...

Sorry but your advise is ill informed and poor.

You will get support from VM no matter what router you use, though I'd keep the one supplied just so when the 'engineer' comes to check your service they can't complain that it is your kit causing the issues (though the idiot that came to my house yesterday claimed my Juniper SRX router was what was causing the issue and loads of their customers had the same problem...)

Anyway...

If you have a Cat5 going upstairs yes, you want another access point, some routers allow themselves to be turned into straight AP's - Apple Airport Extreme/Express f.e. and you could just get another WNR (not that I personally rate them) disable its DHCP servers, fix its IP as something other than your default gateway and outside the DHCP range of the main router and plug one of its LAN ports into that Cat5.

I would not use a wireless repeater as you will generally get poor performance through them and as you have a cable there anyway why bother?
 
I can turn this router into a repeater ive seen it in the settings.

Can I turn this router into a wireless access point. but tbh I dont really rate it much, and ive read some poor reviews of it.

Ideally i would like to shift this upstairs as an WiFi N AP, and get a new router for my main connection. If I could get a Wireless N Gigabit router that would be great as I could filter out the GS605 but im not sure any of these are good, saying that I would need an 8 port, dont think they exist.


Reccommendations?
 
Last edited:
Get another switch then to create more ports, or if you want it all in one box to keep it need you're going to need to look at an AP/Router with GigE ports though they're few and far between and often expensive.

Any particular reason why it needs to be GgiE to his PC, if you're moving very large files around regularly fair enough, but the majority of things it really won't matter for.

You could as mentioned just upgrade the existing router to see if that gets you anywhere.

Not too familiar with consumer wifi stuff anymore really as I generally found it disappointing, Apple kit seems to be fairly decent (got a couple of the little Airport Express things myself, don't do too bad a job) without forking out a lot for "real" wireless kit.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom