TP-Link TD-W8961ND Access Point Help

Harvey616

Harvey616

Harvey616

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Joined
14 Jun 2010
Posts
737
Hello all,

I have just moved into a new house and had virgin fibre optic installed. The range of the superhub in this house is quite bad though- it just about covers 2 of the 3 floors. I have run 30m of Cat5e to the top of the house and am going to install a 5 port gigabit switch next week. However, I want to use my TP-Link ADSL router as an access point upstairs to boost signal.

I want to run an ethernet cable from the switch into the router and then have it forward all wireless traffic to the superhub downstairs. I don't want to use WDS as it means I can only have a maximum of WEP security.

However, I am a bit stuck as to what to do. I have set the TP-Link's DCHP server to relay mode- pointing to the IP of the superhub. I think I need to set the default gateway of the TP-Link router as the superhub, but am unsure as to how to do this and any further steps I need.

Thanks in advance. :)
 
Assign a management IP to the TP-Link that matches the IP range the Superhub is using.
Disable the TP-Link DHCP completely.
Connect the one of the TP-Link LAN ports to the rest of the network.
Configure the wireless with the settings you want to use.

It won't be doing any routing so Gateway settings are irrelevant.

If you want more detailed instructions Google ‘router as access point’ and there’ll be plenty of guides.
 
Thanks very much, just got this set up now and it is working nicely- a very big signal boost. However, I am only getting download speeds of 35 megabits a second- despite being on Virgin 100 megabit and having the wireless access point being N only.

The laptop (Wireless N compatible) is sat right next to the access point and I get 89 megabits per second when it is plugged into the access point by means of cat 6 cable.

Is this the kind of performance I should be expecting?
 
Wireless speeds as set out by wireless N are theoretical only. It's impossible to achieve these throughout figures. The W8961ND is only a 100 Mbit switch so 89Mbit is close enough to make me think that the router just isn't good enough to achieve its full speed. You'd need a gigabit router to get full speed.
 
I have a gigabit switch which connects to my superhub downstairs, so fast speeds are achievable by wired means, but the wireless is slow. I know it is only theoretical- but such a small portion of the wireless N speeds seems silly to me.

I tried some more tests and am getting 38 megabits/s with the onboard intel card and 48 with a TP-Link USB adapter.
 
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