hairybadger
Bricoleur
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2012
- Messages
- 1,377
- Reaction score
- 778
- Points
- 113
- Location
- 46.1N 6.4E
- My Satellite Setup
- see sig
- My Location
- near Geneva, Haute-Savoie, France
Our house suffers from a few wifi dead zones where the signal is either weak or intermittent. The connection is thus very much dependent on the client device: we have few problems with an Airbook, but a humble Android tablet suffers when trying to stream from a Solo2, for example.
I've just bought a Netgear WN3000RP wifi repeater to try and solve the problem. This is a small (10cm high) unit that has two adjustable external aerials (one for the client devices, one for the main wifi access point) that plugs directly into a mains socket (French in my case). You configure it to connect to the main access point and then you point your client devices at it.
Setup process: it provides an unsecured network for setup purposes. You connect to this using a laptop or whatever and start a browser. Using the config web pages you select the network to which you want the repeater to connect and enter the WPA2 (or whatever) key. The repeater then creates its own network (it suggests a name of form ORIGINALNAME_EXT, so for example my main network is A1 and the extended network is A1_EXT) and you create a key for the new network (I chose to use the same key as for the main network). Having done this you can then connect to the new network. Note that you should be able to set up the repeater -> access point connection with WPS, but I didn't try this.
Result: I have a much more reliable service in the normal dead zones and can watch streamed content from the Solo2 without it glitching. At first I thought the repeater wasn't passing certain types of traffic (I couldn't see the solo2 from the tablet when connected via the repeater) but this turned out to be due to a loose (OK - badly fitted by me) ethernet plug that I'd knocked. Setup was painless and it does what it says on the tin. You have to give some thought to where you're going to place the repeater (no point in putting it in a corner that already gets zero connection, you won't gain anything).
Likes: external aerials, small physical size, pass-through power socket, wired ethernet connection, physical off button
Dislike: off button small and fiddly, need to select to which network you want to connect (ie normal or ext) - this is probably client dependent, the ext network uses the same channel as the main network
I've just bought a Netgear WN3000RP wifi repeater to try and solve the problem. This is a small (10cm high) unit that has two adjustable external aerials (one for the client devices, one for the main wifi access point) that plugs directly into a mains socket (French in my case). You configure it to connect to the main access point and then you point your client devices at it.
Setup process: it provides an unsecured network for setup purposes. You connect to this using a laptop or whatever and start a browser. Using the config web pages you select the network to which you want the repeater to connect and enter the WPA2 (or whatever) key. The repeater then creates its own network (it suggests a name of form ORIGINALNAME_EXT, so for example my main network is A1 and the extended network is A1_EXT) and you create a key for the new network (I chose to use the same key as for the main network). Having done this you can then connect to the new network. Note that you should be able to set up the repeater -> access point connection with WPS, but I didn't try this.
Result: I have a much more reliable service in the normal dead zones and can watch streamed content from the Solo2 without it glitching. At first I thought the repeater wasn't passing certain types of traffic (I couldn't see the solo2 from the tablet when connected via the repeater) but this turned out to be due to a loose (OK - badly fitted by me) ethernet plug that I'd knocked. Setup was painless and it does what it says on the tin. You have to give some thought to where you're going to place the repeater (no point in putting it in a corner that already gets zero connection, you won't gain anything).
Likes: external aerials, small physical size, pass-through power socket, wired ethernet connection, physical off button
Dislike: off button small and fiddly, need to select to which network you want to connect (ie normal or ext) - this is probably client dependent, the ext network uses the same channel as the main network