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Forum Discussion
Installed second extender. Now I'm confused.
Please bear with me as I lay this out. I’ll try to be as brief as I can.
Let’s look at my house as having 5 locations: 1, 2, 3 ,4, and 5.
- 1 is on the west end, 3 is in the middle, 5 is on the east end. Each location has a computer, and the router is at 3, in the middle of the house.
- 2 is between 1 and 3. 4 is between 3 and 5. Each of these locations (2 and 4) are where I now have EX6150 extenders.
But let’s back up in time.
I bought Netgear router, but quickly found it would not cover entire house. Router is known as Netgear22, and is located at 3.
I needed wifi at 5, Netgear22 signal was too weak, so I bought an extender (let’s call it ext1) and put it at 4. Just as the manual says, after I did the WPS routine, I then had two additional networks, ending with suffixes GEXT2 and GEXT5, in addition to the original Netgear22 . I then got great reception at location 5, on 2GEXT or 5GEXT (I cannot remember which; but both were visible to the computer, and I chose the stronger one).
Needed better signal at 1. After re-doing the WPS thing I moved ext1 to position 2. That worked great. Computer at position 1 now sees all three networks, but works best on GEXT2.
But now 5 had bad reception again. Which was understandable.
So I bought a second EX6150 (ext2), did the WPS thing, and put it at 4.
I EXPECTED THAT I WOULD NOW HAVE AN ADDITIONAL 2GEXT NETWORK AND AN ADDITIONAL 5GEXT NETWORK in my house. This did not happen. ???
Location 5 now sees only Netgear22 and GEXT2 (not GEXT5). I get decent reception only on Netgear22. I don’t understand this, as orginally I could NOT use Netgear 22 there.
So …
1) Did I set things up right?
2) Should I now have two 2GEXTs and two 4GEXTs, as I expected?
3) Why does computer at 5 not see GEXT5?
4) Why is Netgear22 the only one I can use at 5, when originally I could not use it there at all.
My fear is that, since a lot of this makes no sense to me, I may have set things up wrong. And even though it seems I can maybe get by like this, I am not confident (since things seem odd) that this arrangement will prove to be stable.
Any help will be VERY MUCH APPRECIATED! I am 70 years old, and not great at tech; so please explain very carefully.
Thanks!
Dean
4 Replies
a couple things.
1. what actual router do you have? netgear22 is the ssid name, not the model.
2. If you have the EX6150v2, its a mesh extender. meaning it uses the same ssid as the router if setup in mesh mode. When you use the wps method of install, it installs using mesh. So the same ssid.
3. Version 1 and version 2 of the EX6150 are different in that version 2 has the option of mesh, version 1 doesn't.
4. If you want seperate ssid's, you can install the ex6150 manually using the installation assistant and set it to whatever name you choose.
Thanks so much for responding.
The router is an N300 Wifi Router, Model WNR2000v5.
Both extenders are EX6150v2.
The full names of the sub-networks are NETGEAR22_2GEXT and NETGEAR22_5GEXT.
Frankly, I don't really understand what you're saying. But I don't think I have any real desire to add more names if I don't need them.
I guess my real questions come down to this:
Is the situation I describe normal, based on how I set it up? And will it remain stable?
(And I'm also just curious why the computer at 5 cannot see NETGEAR22_5GEXT, and why NETGEAR22 is now my strongest network at that location, whereas before it was not even viable there.)
I'm not sure if you're computer at "5" is a dual band computer. tough without details.
Check your firmware on your extenders to make sure its current. If they're v2, they have the option for mesh function off your router.
I'd also look at upgrading the router. The WNR2000v5 was a slow router when it was released in 2014 and the original was released in 2009. You'll see a speed/performance benefit from updating the router because its the backbone of the system.
