Add a wireless access point at home using extra router?
 

The garage in my house is a dead spot for my current wifi router. I can't get a signal there. Moving my router within the limits of my cabling doesn't fix it. But I have two other routers I'm no longer using. Is it possible to use one of them as a wireless access point to extend the range of my current router? If so, what is the general procedure for doing that?

My main router is a Verizon Actiontec M424WR. My other unused routers are a D-Link and a Netgear, both of which have wireless capability. The Netgear had a superior range, as I recall.

hi

are you keeping your primary internet router/modem where it is?

so a rough diagram is

internet - modem/router with wifi ......................wireless router near garage that has a ethernet cable to second pc
......................|
..................... |
...................... main pc

2) Have you experiemented with moving the current wifi modem/router to other locations in the house?

Hello Z038,you'll have to look at the manuals of the devices and find out if they (one of them) is able to act as a wireless accesspoint only. This means that (at least) the DHCP-server can be disabled.
If you don't have manuals please post the exact name/type of the devices.
The disadvantage is that you'll have a separate wlan in your garage with its own essid, and you've to configure your computer(s) for two wlans.
Another solution would be a so called "repeater" which only extends the existing wlan, but this cannot be done with your old routers.

Markus

Thanks guys.

aus9 - yes, I've moved my existing router around as far as I reasonably can and still keep all my wired computers in one room. I need to keep my computer room basically intact as it is currently configured because it houses four wired desktop computers, a NAS, and two network-attached printers on a gigabit switch that is connected to the router. I have three laptops and a game console that all use wireless connections. The game computer is in a fixed location in my entertainment center, and it has no problems connecting to my wireless network. The three laptops work everywhere in the house and in the back yard, but not in the garage.

markush - One is a D-Link DI-624, the other is a Netgear WPN824. I can disable DHCP on either one. Why can't both routers broadcast the same ESSID?

The Netgear manual talks about "Infrastructure mode" that is supposed to act as a bridge between wireless clients and a wired lan, but I'm not sure if this router actually supports that or if it is just describing it. I found the reference in the appendix on wireless networking. I'm going to dig into the configuration screens to see if I can find an option.


I was hoping I could just run a long cat 5 cable (100 foot) from a LAN port on my main router, up through the attic and over to the garage, and down to a port (the WAN port?) on the second router. Put the second router on a different network (e.g., 192.168.0.nnn, which is unique from my main router that is on 192.168.1.nnn) and set up a static route between them. I was thinking this might let me use the DHCP server in the second router with hopefully the same ESSID. But I don't know if something like that could work.

Well, I thought of the difference between a repeater and an extender. I don't know if it works with the same essid, particularly if there would be a (low) wlan-connection between both accesspoints additionally to the cable. But you may try that out.
infratructure mode allows connections only between clients and the accesspoint. The other mode would be "ad hoc" mode which would allow clients to connect with each other without the accesspoint.
It is not necessary to use a second DHCP server, you can use the DHCP-service of your Verizone router and leave the garage-computer in the same subnet, which in my opinion is much easier. That is the reason for disabling the DHCP-service on the router in the garage.
Another point: if you use different subnets in the garage and the house it will surely not be possible to use the same essid.
But it is no problem to configure a laptop for different essids. I've done this with my netbook with wpa_supplicant and netcfg (distribution is Arch) which allows for different profiles which connect always to the strongest wireless network.

Markus

Hi,

I've read about the netgear router. It seems that using it as an accesspoint will work. I found a detailed description in this (german) forum: http://www.administrator.de/index.php?content=47400, maybe that helps but you may find an english description as well.

Good luck

Markus

Thank you again Markus. That's a great lead. I will look for an English version, and barring that, I'll try Babelfish or something to translate it.

I'll give it a try tonight if I have time, but more likely this weekend.

Research dd-wrt and openwrt. If your routers do not provide you with the functionality then you can most likely acheive whatever you need using either of these projects.

Neither of my routers appear in the list of supported routers for openwrt or dd-wrt. In fact, both of them appear in the list of incompatible devices.