RT-AC68U(tomato) with RT-AC66U repeater, How?

[Technicallyless]

Had RT-AC66U 1750, setup with "tomato". Just got a RT-AC68U 1900, and loaded tomato on it. Cleared the the old one (RT-AC66U) tomato back to factory firmware and want to use it as an extender set up as a repeater to extend wifi to outside patio area. Do I keep tomato on both, or just the one? How do I do this correctly? Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[bill001g]

Does the factory firmware actually have repeater mode....asus changes things so fast I can never keep up. Now this is only wireless if you mean using a ethernet cable to extend it all routers can do that as a AP.

Since you already know how to use tomato I would run them both on tomato.

In any case you will need to use WDS to make this work. On the main router you will likely have to allow your slave router to connect using WDS. The slave router does not need to do much special other than run in repeater mode.

Now with tomato you have the addition option of using 1 radio to talk to the main router and the second radio to talk to the end uses. You will have to decide where you use the 2.4g and 5g radios that best meet your needs. Although it is more tricky to setup this mode does not get the huge penalty you get when you transmit the duplicated signal right back to the main router.

 

[Technicallyless]

Does the factory firmware actually have repeater mode....asus changes things so fast I can never keep up. Now this is only wireless if you mean using a ethernet cable to extend it all routers can do that as a AP.

Since you already know how to use tomato I would run them both on tomato.

In any case you will need to use WDS to make this work. On the main router you will likely have to allow your slave router to connect using WDS. The slave router does not need to do much special other than run in repeater mode.

Now with tomato you have the addition option of using 1 radio to talk to the main router and the second radio to talk to the end uses. You will have to decide where you use the 2.4g and 5g radios that best meet your needs. Although it is more tricky to setup this mode does not get the huge penalty you get when you transmit the duplicated signal right back to the main router.

 

[Technicallyless]

In answer to your question, yes, the RT-AC66U DOES have the repeater mode on the factory firmware. But if you think BOTH should be set up on "tomato", I can reload it back onto the 66U, no problem. I've read a little about this and find that you can do this by setting the slave, which, in this case is the AC66U, to the specific network, 2.4 or 5G, by using the network name/password combo. It did not elaborate as to what the rest of the settings needed should be set to, on the master or slave routers. What I'm hoping to accomplish is to extend the 5G band by using the old AC66U at the back of the house to plug it in and repeat the the wifi signal out through one wall to the outside at the patio. With the new RT-AC68U with the 1 Ghz, dual-core processor, I'm getting 168.4 Mbps at the patio, then drops greatly about ten feet further away from the house, down to 67.2 Mbps and a few more feet back, down to 6-8 Mbps. This is almost triple of what the old AC66U was giving me. I'd like to stream MLB to watch some games out on the patio on a laptop, ipad, or even if on my iphone, if possible. I have watched some on my iphone and the old router, although it kept getting "the spinning wheel if death" many times from the router location(center of house). Also, does anyone know where to find more info on "tomato" and how to "tweak" the settings correctly? I know you can do many things with it, but, I'm leery on changing setting(s) that already work with the limited knowledge I have on this subject(just enough to be dangerous and really screw it all up). Thanks for your reply and help.