Using spare router to boost wireless signal

sparkymark75

sparkymark75

sparkymark75

Soldato
Joined
8 Jan 2003
Posts
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Location
Scotland
I'm setting up my spare 360 in the bedroom as a Media Center Extender. When configuring it in WMC, it stated that network performance was poor and showed only two bars of the umpteen that were there.

The spare 360 has the original wireless adapter in it. My router is downstairs in the livingroom and is a D-Link DIR-655. It's connected via Gigabit ethernet to the media "server".

I have a spare D-Link DIR-615 (got it from Virgin). I was wondering if it would be possible to put this on the stair landing and use it to boost the wireless signal? Or would it have to be connected by cable to the main router?

Would I be better investing in the wireless N adapter for the 360?
 
I'd rather avoid running cable between the two routers. It looks like I can use something called WDS to allow wireless repeater bridging between the two routers. However it also appears the bandwidth is limited using this approach.

At any rate, to be able to do anything useful with the spare router, looks like I'll have to flash it to use DD-WRT :rolleyes:

Bricked router coming up....
 
Update, I gave up on the wireless bridging/repeater approach and ran a cable up the outside wall of the house (took hours to drill through concrete walls!).

So I've got the downstairs router (a DIR-655, SSID: downstairs), connected to the upstairs router via cable to it's WAN port (DIR-615, SSID: upstairs). I've got it setup as a wireless access point (folowing the guide at http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Access_Point) and all is working well.

However, there are devices such as laptops which will be used upstairs and down. They seem to remain connected to the AP they last connected to, whereas I'd like them to connect to the AP with the strongest signal. So if I'm in the livingroom and then go upstairs to the bedroom with my laptop, it should then "connect" to the upstairs AP. Is this do-able? Would it be better to just give the two AP's the same SSID and security settings?
 
Azuse05 said:
Should be the strongest signal, automatically.

Although I have to ask (and I'm glad it works :)), if you had a signal upstairs already, why did you drill holes in the walls instead of simply using it as a wireless repeater?
Click to expand...

I plan to stream media to the upstairs 360 so I wanted that connected via cable.
 
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