Configuring A Router As A Repeater
Hermila Farquhar
I'm not in IT so sorry if I dont use the terms right. I just want to know if what I'm trying to do is even feasible or if I should just go and buy a new router or that VR dongle with support for what I'm trying to do.
I live in a duplex where my landlord provides my home with WIFI (yes its included in the lease) from a normal modem and router from his unit. I do not have physical access to his router or modem. I connect my Windows PC to his router via a USB wifi adapter for gaming and streaming. the connection is fine. However, I want to connect my Meta Quest 2 to my PC via air link/virtual desktop. The best way to do that I understand is by having my Quest 2 connected to my PC using a router thats as close as possible to where I'm playing with the headset. Ideally the same room. Additionally I dont want the latency between the PC and Quest to rise if he starts using the wifi heavily.
Optimally I want to setup my router as a sort of extender connected to my landlords wifi network. This way I can connect my Quest to my PC for virtual desktop or air link and still use the wifi to download apps to the Quest. If I have to, I would be happy just setting up my router as a network without wifi to connect my PC and Quest.
the R6080 is one of the most base model devices netgear makes. I don't think it has a repeater/extender mode (that I found in the manual) Its also only a 10/100mbps device. The VR headsets use a decent amount of data so the better connection you can have, the better. Not sure if it'd have the throughput to handle the VR setup.
My primary router is a Nighthawk R7000. Can somebody please tell me in layman terminology, assuming I know nothing about this topic which I don't, how to setup a WNDR3400 as a repeater/entender? There are several tutorials I've found on the net plus the tutorial located on this web site: -do-I-configure-my-Nighthawk-router-as-a-wireless-repeater#. Too many details are left to my imagination.
For instance, just for starters, I currently have the WNDR3400 plugged into a port on the R7000 but can only access the configuration page for the R7000. So, I'm doing something wrong there. Once I can access both configuration pages, assuming that is possible. How do I configure the WNDR to perform as a repeater/extender for the R7000? I would appreciate any guidance on this. Thanks.
Cables (and much more fibers) are the most reliable, future-proof, secure, and fast investment. It's mainly the consumer industry which want to make us believe that all wireless is the way to go. Boah oh 5G mobile, WiFi 6, ... Of course you can head out buying a WiFi Mesh Extender, or an all-new shiny Mesh system. And you will repeat that process about all two or three years again. The more unpractical cable installations are, the less are wireless extensions feasible alternate solutions. If wireless would be the perfect solution - if your router can't cover the dead spot, how should a Mesh system or extender (installed somewhere on the half of the distance) bring performance and reliability? The best Mesh systems operate much more reliable and perform much better when operated on a wired backhaul. Figure. And 20 years later - promised - your cable will continue to work. Already today on Gigabit, tomorrow on MultiGig or 10 Gigabit.
Thank you for your response. I need the routers to be connected wirelessly as running a cable between them is not practicable. The R7000 will be the primary router. The WNDR3400v2 will be the repeater/extender located in another room, upstairs. There are tutorials on the 'net which describe a procedure to accomplish this but, unfortunately, the procedure involves non Netgear routers which is causing me problems in interpolation as router configuration pages differ somewhat in their layouts and terminology.
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. The WEP requirement is a deal killer. The tutorial I was going to use to configure this doesn't even mention WEP which would have caused a lot frustration wondering why the repeater wasn't working. -Two-Routers
I was developing a suspicion about the efficacy of wireless when my wife kept complaing that her computer upstairs was running so slow on the Internet despite the fact that she has a Nighthawk X6S right next to her PC upstairs, which is directly above my downstairs PC and its R7000. I drilled a hole in the ceiling and ran an ethernet cable from her box to my router. Problem solved, which affirms what you say. Also, my wifi security camera, right ouside the window and 10 feet above and away from my R7000 keeps giving me an "Unstable Network" message error, won't connect and/or disconnects. So, thanks for clearing things up and saving me a lot of wasted time. At 70 I just don't want to waste time.
I was successfully able to install and upgrade LEDE on my TP-Link RE450 repeater. However, I am having trouble using it as a travel router. The application is when you have only 1 connection available to a hotel wifi network and want to rebroadcast it to create your own private network such that all your devices can connect via that same connection without losing bandwidth (exploiting dual radio).
In essence, as far as the main router is concerned it only sees 1 device (the repeater) connected to its 2.4 GHz network. But, the private 5 GHz network is allowing multiple devices to be connected through that connection. The private network is completely invisible to the main router or its direct clients! A picture is worth a thousand words so here is the configuration:
I could only find a Wiki page that shows how to setup a repeater using relayed with bridge configuration (click here to view). Unfortunately, this configuration cannot be used for this application because in this case:
I have managed to create a 2.4 GHz Client that is connected to the main router's WiFi. I have also created a 5 GHz Access Point that is broadcasted across my house (see image below). However, I am unable to get any internet on the created 5 GHz hotspot.
This is a Wireless Client mode (the WiFI acts at the WAN port), which is exactly what you asked for. This is good, because Wireless Bridge mode (where the clients get the same IP as the Master AP) doesn't setup quite well on all devices.
On the main status page you should see WAN has been assigned an IPv4 address. If this address is in the 192.168.1.x range, overlapping LAN, the Internet will not be reachable. You then need to change the LAN address range to something else.
Take a look at the link and if this is the route you want to go, I can give you some more insight and advice about how I made mine work (I've added a bunch of functionality on top of what Logan had outlined), including automatically enabling the VPN (when desired), ability to switch the ethernet port between LAN and WAN, LED indications of the status VPN and general network status,, etc.
Also, one VERY important aspect of these wireless chipsets is that if the upstream (wireless WAN) connection cannot be established, the entire radio fails to start, so you need a way to connect and/or to reset the radio(s). If you are using something with 2 radios (like the RE450 or the WR902AC) and then keep one radio purely for the private (LAN) network, you should be okay since you'll always have access. But that was one of the other improvements I made to the functions of the MR3020 and WR902AC - at boot time, if the switch is in a specific position, it will 'reset' the network and wireless settings to a known good state.
I can't install a lot of packages due to limited space on my device so I want to do as much as I can manually. Wait a second, the MR3020 has half the Flash MB (only 4 MB) available as mine. Do you have space to install packages like Travelmate?
I will always have access to the repeater because my 5 GHz AP is purely LAN. However, if in case the upstream connection fails, do you know the command to get it back up i.e. so that it tries to reconnect to the main router?
I pack a router in my luggage to do exactly this. There's usually someplace in
the room that the router (with it's better antennas) can get a signal, and then
all my devices can connect through it (and I pay for one mac address)
@openwrt_newbie999 - Due to the very limited flash (4MB), I perform the extroot process and use a USB thumb drive to effectively increase the flash storage capacity. It is necessary to use the image builder tool to exclude LuCI and include the appropriate USB + storage drivers to get started. I have a set of scripts that performs the extroot, sets up the basic networking, and installs LuCi and all the other packages I need.
Also travelmate is a good product, but you may want to verify with dirk some of the fine points (ie radio config). I think you should make sure you understand which is radio0 and radio1 and that it maps correctly in the product. Not too many dual radio setups out there.
The paradigm of a "VPN" is quite different, but I've found it to be simple and straightforward to setup from LuCI. At this time, your other endpoints must be Linux or OSX-based, but if you plan to use a travel router to connect home for example, it would work as a ad hoc point-to-point VPN when you use the travel router away.
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