Extending my wireless network

[Mystyx]

Ok, what I am trying to accomplish is to extend my wireless network to the upper part of my home as the signal gets weak when going into the living room. Normally I would just run an ethernet cable from one router to the other and be done with it, but this is not an option at the moment. My home is 1 level, but about 120 ft. long if that helps at all.

The equipment I am using for this is: 1) Frontier Westell 7500 DSL modem/router combo 2) TP_Link TL-WDR3500.

This process should be fairly simple, but after hours of trying and reading through forums, have found nothing.

To start off, both of my routers have different factory ip addresses, so I did not change anything there. I went into my tp-link router and enabled WDS Bridge mode and surveyed for my wireless network, it filled in the MAC address etc. for me. Also disabled DHCP on my TP-Link as well. The problem I am having is getting the 2 routers to connect so my TP-Link has an internet connection.

I am not a beginner to networking, but far from being a pro. Any help is appreciated! Also if there are other options to achieving this setup, I am open to anything.

 

[bill001g]

I am to lazy to dig though the documentation. Can the tp-link device run in repeater mode or just bridge mode.

Bridge mode likely will do you no good because the tp-link will also likely get poor signal and then you would connect it to your PC via ethernet and it would work no better than the PC without the device.

If it runs in repeater mode then you want to place the device 1/2 between in a location that gets good signal and still provide signal to the far location.

Most the issues getting devices to run in repeater mode are related to WDS. WDS is not a standard so there are small variations between vendors. It is mostly related to the chipset they use. Many times you have to disable the WPA/WPA2 security to get it to work which is a very bad option to be forced into.

Even if you get it to work you will see a 50% drop in your wireless speed at a very minimum.

You may want to see if powerline networks will work in your house. These tend to do better in some houses.

 

[Mystyx]

I do not believe my router will run as a repeater. If it does, I cannot find anything stating it does. And currently I have no security on my wireless network, which is not a problem. The closest neighbor is over 600 ft. away. And have not heard of the powerline network before, will do some research on that. This house is a good 50 years old, do not know if that matters for a powerline network.

 

[bill001g]

A client-bridge is best though of a wireless nic card that connects to your pc via a ethernet cable rather than say USB. If you could run ethernet part way and get it closer to the router it might be able to pick up the signal and give it to your PC.

Be sure you buy the powerline from someplace that accepts returns there are some rare houses it does not want to work in. Once you got your powerline working you would use your second router as a AP connected to the powerline.

 

[Mystyx]

Looked at that powerline network, and is a great alternative. and I believe running an ethernet cable is going to be my most stable option, just have to find 200ft. of ethernet cable for cheap, lol. And I did not even think of a client bridge, may try that out before I go buy a bunch of ethernet cable.