Wireless network repeaters

[greypanther]

It's only a little wire and tucks away nicely.

That said, I guess if you can afford the tidier alternative, I can understand why you would. At least I assume the other way will cost more...

[mrbadger]

I'm biased because it's the method I used, but I recall when Ethernet over powerline was just a shaky concept.

That you can just plug in a high speed wired network with no configuration at all now is fantastic. I wish I'd had it years ago. I'd never recommend wiring a normal house with network cable again now. It used to be my standard approach, I've done it several times.

So much drilling.....

Right now I only have two and most things are connected wirelessly, except for my storage and PC. I may go for more in the future, but that seems to be enough for now.

[Antilogic]

The point of extending the wireless network was to avoid cabling . That having been said I think going powerline / ethernet over power is probably the answer.

So use power. I mean, cabling is still the best, but if you must not...

Your house isn't that fancy just do some proper cabling and it'll be fine

[RegisterMe]

Your house isn't that fancy just do some proper cabling and it'll be fine

You know me well enough to understand that my objection to "proper cabling" is simple laziness .

[RegisterMe]

Well, my first wireless repeater (unbranded, ~£30 from Amazon) has been an abject failure. The only reason I know that there's actually anything in the device is because there was something to log into.

Next step ethernet over power........

[Rug]

I had been using a little wireless range extender thing. It worked, up to a point, but was pretty slow quite often.

Then I had a fortuitous upgrade to fibre, with a new router.

I now use the old router as a WAP, connected via Cat5, and it is much faster and more reliable.

So if you have an old broadband router lying about (or know someone who does), then this could be a cheap and effective solution perhaps ? (Mine was EE kit, but I'm sure that other stuff will work just as well)

Rug

[RegisterMe]

Next step was Google Mesh (which I think is actually an Apple product). It's meant to be so clever it just works out the box. It doesn't.

* If I plug the first Mesh device directly into the broadband modem it can't see the internet.
* If I connect the first Mesh device to the BT Home Hub it can see the internet, and I do get a wireless network...... but the second Mesh device can't connect to the wireless network.

So taking a leaf out of Rug's book I now have a new BT router on the way.

This should be easier :/.

[Rug]

The instruction I used were :

To make the BB1 a WAP on your LAN:

Set Broadband Type of BB1 = Fibre/Ethernet, under Basic Settings.
Disable NAT on BB1.
Disable DHCP on BB1.
Set the Gateway IP Addy of the BB1, under DHCP, to be diff from that of BB2 but on same subnet, e.g. if BB2's is 192.168.1.1, make the BB1's 192.168.1.2. You will need to connect the BB1 individually to your PC to do these 1st 4 steps.
Connect BB2 LAN port to BB1 Red WAN port by Ethernet cable or PowerLines, as suggested in other reply.
Reserve the BB1's Gateway IP Addy in the DHCP of the BB2.
Make the Wireless SSID & pwd of BB1 to be same as BB2 (or you can play around with separate WLANs).

Remember that the BB! can only do 2.4 GHz wireless, so is less versatile than a BB2.

BB1 and BB2 are the BrightBox routers - old and new ones. The actual setup I think should be universal (unless someone more network savvy can tell me otherwise).

Rug