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Kieran1's avatar
Kieran1
Aspirant
Jul 07, 2017

Trying to set up DG834N router as wireless access point for an ethernet printer across Virgin WiFi.

Hello all.

 

I've spent the last few days trawling the advice and instructions given on the web and attempting to complete this task, with much unplugging, replugging and typing of ip addresses. It seems there are lots of tutorials to set this system up with the 2nd router/access point finally being connected via ethernet to the main router but I can't do that at present and I want to know if the 2nd router/access point can be set up wirelessly?

 

Firstly I'm Mac based OS 10.11 with a Virgin SuperHub2 as my main router and here's what i'm trying to do.

 

I have an old DG834N router.

My iMac is in my basement and my virgin router is in the room above. The iMac networking is via wifi and works fine across the dual bands.

I don't have wired cabling down into my basement & I suspect the electrical ring is seperate to that above ground and therefore powerlines may not work.

 

I recently acquired a ethernet printer (HP officejet 4500 G510g).

 

I want to set up the DG834N as a wireless access point/repeater/bridge in order to connect the ethernet printer and then access this via the iMac and as a networked printer?

 

I've been into the DG834N and done a factory reset (a few times), updated the firmware, set the LAN ip details to match my main virgin router SSID, WPA2, Password, Channel, disabled DCHP and selected a WDS system, most times as a wireless repeater.

 

The furthest I have got is setting up all these details and then attempting to find the printer on the network on my iMac.

 

I presume I need to create a second wifi setting in my network settings with a static ip address and subnet to match the DG834N settings.

On occasion the iMac has seen the printer but when I try to install the printer it can't because of network issues as the second static ip address has seemingly 'knocked out' or conflicted with the original 2.4ghz wifi. When I try and seperate the wifi details it changes both at the same time i.e if I try to set the main wifi to 5G it changes the printer wifi to 5G too and the router/printer will only use 2.4g.

 

I've tried to set up a seperate location in my network setting but it still behaves the same way.

 

Also I get frequent, 'another device is using this ip address' messages.

 

I have also re-booted my main router a few times and slowly restarted each device one by one.

 

Oh and I've also connected the printer directly to the iMac to install it in a hope that this would facilitate things if I solved the network problems. Unfortunately I cannot leave the printer directly connected to the iMac permanently as there's not enough space, cabling, power etc.

 

I realise there's a lot of different stumbling blocks (Gotcha's?) in this setup but I'd appreciate any help you can give.

 

Thanks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Reply

  • This is purely my 2 cents, but don't bother trying to set up a Netgear router as a wireless repeater.  WDS is an older method for wireless bridging.  It's not well supported by Netgear and it requires all participants in the bridge (i.e. your Virgin and your Netgear) to participate.  Netgear has removed WDS on its newer routers.

     

    If you have any coax wiring, consider using MoCA adapters.  MoCA is essentially Ethernet over coax.

     

    If that's not a possibility, then buy either an Ethernet to Wireless adapter, like the WNCE2001, or buy a range extender.