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Forum Discussion
Using range extender with switch
Dear all
I want to use my Nighthawk as a range extender to link our home office with the internet router [Orange Livebox - fast fibre]. That is in another room – location fixed by the provider technicians [the building's fibre "trunk" is the other side of the wall].
Currently we have 3x iMacs and 2 printers on wifi + 1 USB printer, but wifi can be flaky [1960s building, lots of rebar etc].
My solution: hardwire all units with Cat6 to the Nighthawkm which I can position almost "line of sight" to the Orange box].
Since that = 6 units and the Nhawk has only 5x RJ45, I plan to use my old Prosafe switch to give 1 or 2 extra connections.
Questions:
- Will this work? [Assuming I can find a good position for the Nhawk]
- Does it matter which units – Macs or printers – are wired to the Extender and which go via the switch?
- Do I still need the Macs to use wifi protocols to connect to the router / internet
- What else do I need to know?
TIA
Ken
2 Macs are current / recent using Big Sur / Catalina, 1 older Mac on Mojave.
Orange Livebox provides AC networking @ 2.4GHz / 5GHz
1 Reply
kenincaen wrote:
- Will this work? [Assuming I can find a good position for the Nhawk]----it should. I've wired an unmanged switch to a range extender before.
- Does it matter which units – Macs or printers – are wired to the Extender and which go via the switch?---no. the bottleneck isn't going to be the wired connection. It'll be the wireless connection between router----extender.
- Do I still need the Macs to use wifi protocols to connect to the router / internet ---shouldn't need to. the wired connection should work fine.
- What else do I need to know?
TIA
Ken
2 Macs are current / recent using Big Sur / Catalina, 1 older Mac on Mojave.
Orange Livebox provides AC networking @ 2.4GHz / 5GHz
