how to set up more than 1 wireless AP?

skanky · 16 Aug 2007 at 16:23

am needing wireless setting up in my house and was thinking of using the wireless on my router and placing the router downstairs and buying a wireless AP to put upstairs.

i wanted it so where ever i am in the house, my laptop will pick up the best/closest wireless signal but both on the same "network" so i am able to access my NAS whereever i am (that would just be the SSID, right?)

do i set both wireless devices to use the same SSID/channel as each other, or should it be same SSID, different channel?

a little confused

hybrid · 16 Aug 2007 at 19:37

Same SSID and select different channels for each to prevent overlapping.

How come you need two AP's in a house?? Old thick brick/lead lined walls or something?

skanky · 21 Aug 2007 at 23:07

lead walls, just making sure superman cant see into my house

nah, i'm just covering my bases to ensure i'll have sufficent coverage all over the house/garden.

i already have a netgear dg834g which can be apparently used in bridged mode (that means it doesnt act as a modem, correct) and that bethere provide their own wireless router, i thought i'd take advantage of that.

tolien · 22 Aug 2007 at 00:46

Unless they do WDS or repeater mode or whatever the manufacturer decides to call it, you'd need to connect the AP to the router somehow - either with a cable or something else.

skanky said:
(that means it doesnt act as a modem, correct)

Depends which part's bridged. It might mean it only acts as a modem, and passes the public IP from your ISP on to whatever's behind it. The wireless AP and wired switch bits are bridged by default in 99% of routers.
Bridging doesn't really do anything useful for what you want though.

!bluetonic! · 22 Aug 2007 at 12:16

I've got 3 APs connected via WDS. It's apparently as insecure as WEP.

2 x K Corp and 1 x Edimax one.

It doesn't jump you onto the strongest signal AP, to my knowledge. I don't think I've set that up right, unless that comes in the WDS setup?!

What it does do is allow 1 AP to sit by the Cable router, 1 AP to sit with my gf's PC to increase the w/less signal and one connected to my hoards of PCs. All can happily talk to each other.

tolien · 22 Aug 2007 at 21:43

!bluetonic! said:
I've got 3 APs connected via WDS. It's apparently as insecure as WEP.

WDS hasn't really got anything to do with the security - it's just a means for the other APs to act as repeaters. It's the fact that a good number of APs won't do WPA with WDS that makes it a security issue.