Use second router as WIFI extension

Rowan88 · 28 Nov 2017 at 12:20

Hi

I have quite thick stone walls in my home so when I use my WIFI from my SkyHub downstairs it is fine, however upstairs I get "marginal" for the signal.

I have wired an ethernet cable from the Sky Hub to a room upstairs but I was wondering what the best option is for turning this into another WIFI signal upstairs.

Should I keep the same SSID on both and what is the best way to set this up?

I have a SkyHub downstairs as the main router and my spare router is a Netgear WNR2000.

Thanks

pepp77 · 28 Nov 2017 at 12:24

same or different SSID in that situation doesnt really matter. If same SSID your device would connect to the one with the strongest signal, but wouldnt roam if say you connected your phone upstairs and then went downstairs it would stay connected to upstairs unless you turned wifi on and off on the phone.
Different SSID would mean manually switching between locations for the strongest signal - I do it this way as the first way annoyed me - have the same setup you are contemplating.

For actual setup, on the second device turn off DHCP then plug a cable from a LAN port on the first router to a LAN port on the second router and you are good to go.

Rowan88 · 28 Nov 2017 at 12:34

Great thanks for your help.

I had the same SSID before and on mobiles etc it was easy enough to disable/enable WIFI, but on devices like Firesticks etc it was more a pain. I guess I will reset router, turn off DCHP and change WIFI SSID to a different network name.

Thanks for your help

bledd · 28 Nov 2017 at 21:06

If your main router ip is 1.1, then set the second one as 1.2 add edit the range of the first router so it never dishes out an address of 1.2.

And disable DHCP on the second router.

Don't connect it to the WAN port on second router.

m4rkw7 · 2 Dec 2017 at 22:14

You could keep the same SSID and just reduce the wireless transmit power if that's an option. If the range drops out it will connect to the other one.