Help bridging wireless network to another building

Pierat

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Feb 23, 2017
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I have a home network, which also includes my on-site business in a separate building. I just moved to this house and found that while my netgear EA4500 worked just good enough to broadcast from my house to my shop at our last house, it won't reach from the house to the shop here. Thinking a newer, better router might have better range, I went out today and bought the Netgear Nighthawk X6 R7900. Installed new router this afternoon and still don't have strong enough signal in my shop to get better than 0.9mbps down and much less up. I thought about using a range extender, but my dilemma is that I have a network printer at work that I need to be able to print to from the house and a NAS in the house I need to access from my shop. I may be wrong, but in the past I came to find I need to be on the same SSID for all of these to work, and a range extender would extend my network with a different SSID, making communication between all devices impossible. I have found a netgear article that explains setting up an extender using the same SSID, but it also says there may be issues with that confifuration. I should also say that I have no preference for netgear products. I use them because I tend to shop at Costco and that's what they usually carry.

So, now I have my two routers and am wondering if I can bridge my network from the R7900 in my house to the EA4500 in my shop. It's about 80 feet away, but I have an empty conduit underground already and can pull a cat5 or cat6 cable very easily. My question is, can I set up my routers, either with stock firmware or ddwrt to send my same SSID to a wired bridge router from my house to my shop? And if I do so, will I have problems using the same SSID? Finally, will my portable devices like phones and tablets be able to switch automatically between whichever router is sending the strongest signal and have a seamless hand off between the two routers when moving between them? If not, I see there is also a range extender that's also a nighthawk product, the AC1900. I would consider buying one of these if it would do what I want. Again, netgear has an article that says you can use their extenders with the same SSID, but I have read all over the place that there can be issues with that kind of setup. In fact, I tried it once before when I bought my my ea4500 and setting up ddwrt on my previous router, but I remember getting stuck at some point and giving up. I am more determined and more desperate now, though, as it's causing a delay in getting my business up and running at my new house.

I know that the new mesh devices would do exactly what I want, but I have a problem justifying a higher cost for devices which have proprietary communication abilities and I can't just go out and get whatever new satellite comes out, netgear or not and add it into my network later. At least with standard routers or extenders, if one device breaks, I can replace it with newer technology later and upgrade the other pieces as necessary. I don't want to spend $500 now and know I will need to spend $500+ if I need to change the whole setup with something upgraded later and have that much expensive, obsolete technology sitting in a junk drawer. Mesh technology seems like it would save a lot of time with setup and save me from having to use my empty conduit I buried for running extra power lines later. So I am very open to this if it is going to be a lot easier in the long run. I really need to solve this network issue quickly, so I need a sure fire solution here before I start investing a lot of time for trial and error solutions.

Because I need to communicate with my NAS, I am considering running a cat cable to that anyway and using that at my desk for my computer, but I still need WiFi access for phones and tablets for my work.

I am tech savvy, but quite a noob with networking, so any replies, tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
the thing is, when you run a router in AP mode it will extend it reach out from your work office and connect to the home router thus link them together use AP mode in office router and set SSID to same as home ID. (using an extender would be the same solution (as I have this situation myself) Find the stronger signal (Wi-Fi) 3.4 or 5ghz, I use 5ghz to link the routers and in the office use 2.4 for Wi-Fi needs I have (cell phone) and plug the rest into AP router in office as normal
you will then be able to access printer Nas etc. in the house form the office.

it is how I did my configs, office is about 75 feet from house, and works nicely.
 
Run the cable from router to router, then set up the second router as an access point.

Here is the forum sticky note general instructions. If you have any question specific to your equipment, just ask.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/36406-43-convert-wireless-router-wireless-access-point

You can use the same SSID or a different one on each router. For the best security, use WPA2 with AES, set a complex encryption key and turn the WPS off.
 
Solution
Thanks to all for your replies, very helpful. It seems just setting up a wired AP is the best solution for me. I have read elsewhere that if the AP is running the same SSID, I can have problems with devices trying to connect to the wrong (weaker) source. Is this going to be an issue? And if I connect a portable device to the network in my shop and walk home, will it be constantly trying to reach the shop AP? Or will it hand off to the stronger one? I assume this is dependent more on the individual device and it's software, right?



I'm a little closer, but the conduit is about 80 feet from the corner of the house to where is comes into my shop. I didn't quite follow what you meant about using 2.4ghz to connect the routers and 5ghz for wifi. Your extender is dual band and you can choose which band to connect them with but use the other for your wireless needs? I'm a little confused by that. But I have read that I will lose significant speed using a wireless range extender, so I am leaning more towards pulling the cable anyway. Being that I want to link to my NAS which has larger files like my graphic design work that I need to work on in the shop, I think I need to maximize my speed the best I can.
 
well I se the 5ghz to connect router to extender to give me greatest speed possible between extender and plugged in device in switch... the 2.4 then is for inside shop for use if need it like my cell phone... I get 50Mb/s having my pc on switch that way plenty fast for file transfers, movies, etc etc, but if your going to run a cable, then use router as AP in office then

 
Ok, thanks for the advice. I think it appears the solution here is to just run the cable and set up second router as AP. Petrossa suggested setting both routers as AP, but then there is no DHCP. So unless I'm mistaken or my lack of knowledge is truly showing, I guess future readers should note that wouldn't work. Please, correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks for the help, folks. Looks like I have cable shopping to do now.
 
you know if your running a cable , all you need is a switch unless you need wifi in the office.
No don't set BOTH routers as AP, then your ISP would not work with the home router in AP mode.


ISP>>HOME>>ROUTER[----------------------]Office>> AP(or switch)

this is what is supposed to be looking like
 
If I run the cable, should I use cat5e or cat6a? Not sure cat6a is worth it. I don't have any devices right now capable of running faster than 1Gb anyway, so 10Gb is pretty far away for me.
 
Both are rated for GB at up to 100 meters. So use whatever you want.

Mobile devices don't switch wifi well on home networks, so use of same or different SSIDs is not a big deal. If you want to keep the shop wifi for you use a separate SSID. If you want to share it with others in the family and not explain the reasons why things are different and set up devices twice for family members, use the same SSID. I do the latter.

If you really need to connect to a specific AP, then set up a second SSID that on the AP identifies it.