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Netgear R7000 as repeater

adlerhn
Aspirant

Netgear R7000 as repeater

I have a home wifi, provided by a from a non-Netgear modem/router.

 

I want to extend the range of the wifi so that it reaches the other side of the house, and avoid the use of cables.

 

As I have a R7000 router which I am not using at the moment (and I just upgraded to the latest firmware), I thought on putting this in the repeating mode.

 

However, I am having 2 issues:

  • I can only select repeating mode if I have disabled wifi security first. So, anyone will be able to connect to the extended network.
  • When I configure the repeating, I can select the MAC of the base router, but there is no place to select the details of the wifi that the repeater has to connect to. As a result, after selecting repeating mode, I cannot connect to the Internet. Not only that, but I can no longer connect to the R7000 router, so I can only reset again to factory defaults and start again.

Is there any way in which I can use a R7000 router to extend my wifi without laying cables all around my house? I used to have a $10 repeater that did this (albeit it was a bit slow).

Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
Message 1 of 10

Accepted Solutions
adlerhn
Aspirant

Re: Netgear R7000 as repeater

I have reset the router to factory defaults and tried again to configure the Repeater mode of Asuswrt-Merlin 380.65_0. However, the same issue persists: I cannot reach the parent router.

In the end I have done this configuration with Advanced Tomato 3.4 138, which does not have a Repeater mode. These are the main steps in case anyone else wants to achieve the same:

* DHCP disabled in the repeating router.

* I have set the 2.4G wireless network as an Access Point, which is the one my devices will connect to. As 2.4G has higher penetration, the 2.4G signal seems to arrive well to all the rooms.
* Channel Width for the 2.4G network: 20 MHz, to minimise collision with the neighbours.

* The 5G network, I have set as Wireless Ethernet Bridge, using the same SSID and password as the 5G network of the parent router.

* Everything else: as per default.

Now, the only downside is that the repeated network is *much* slower than the original one. With both routers side by side and my PC next to them, connecting directly to the parent router I get about 235 Mbps down / 25 Mbps up. But connecting to the repeater router I only get about 25 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up. Which is not too bad, but it is almost 10% of the speed of the original router.

I had already read that when using a repeater the throughtput would be halved, since the same radio has to be used for sending and receiving from the parent router and from clients. On the other hand, I am using an entirely separate band for connecting to the parent router (5G) and the clients (2.4G), so I was hoping this not to be an issue, or at least not to lose 90% of the banwidth.

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Message 9 of 10

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TheEther
Guru

Re: Netgear R7000 as repeater

You'll need third-party firmware to get repeater functionality with security.  Stock firmware won't cut it.  Use DD-WRT, Tomato or Asuswrt-Merlin.

Message 2 of 10
adlerhn
Aspirant

Re: Netgear R7000 as repeater

Thanks for your response. Any recommendation?

Message 3 of 10
TheEther
Guru

Re: Netgear R7000 as repeater

I use Asuswrt-Merlin.  You can find it here.  I've heard good things about Tomato.  Google tomato r7000 and you should find the link to download it.

 

[Edit: The obligatory caveat emptor.]

Message 4 of 10
adlerhn
Aspirant

Re: Netgear R7000 as repeater

Thanks! I have tested Advanced Tomato, for which setting up a repeater seems very complicated.

 

With Asuswrt-Merlin, I can select the Repeater Mode, and select the SSID and enter the password. I have set up the router using a static IP, and Google's DNS servers.  After restart I can connect to this router and log in in the admin UI, which says "Parent AP status : Connected". However, I can not connect to the parent router anything upstream. I have no internet access, nor can I access the admin UI of the modem/router.

 

Any idea of why the router can not connect to the parent AP and the Internet?

Message 5 of 10
TheEther
Guru

Re: Netgear R7000 as repeater

Do you have any kind of access control or restrictions configured on the parent router, such as MAC address access control?

 

Can you ping the parent router from the device?

Message 6 of 10
adlerhn
Aspirant

Re: Netgear R7000 as repeater

There are no access restrictions on the modem/AP. All clients I have around (phone, tablet, PC) connect with no issues.

The network map in the admin screen of the router/repeater shows "Parent AP status: Connected".

I just tried "ping -c 1 192.168.0.1" in the Toos->Run Cmd tab in the admin screen of the router/repeater, and there was no response from the modem/AP.

If in the router/repeater I select to get the LAN IP automatically (which in general I would not do, as I prefer it to have a static/known IP address in case I need to log in in its admin UI), I can see that the modem/AP does provide an IP address via DHCP, in the expected range.

I can use DHCP to get an IP address for my PC when I connect to the router/repeater, and I do get an IP address and DNS server as if the modem/AP had assigned it. DHCP seems to go through, yay.

Then, regardless of whether I had set a static IP or used DHCP, I can connect to the router/repeater, but nowhere else (not to the modem/AP by its IP address, which is in the same network, and not to the Internet by using Google's DNS servers).

Message 7 of 10
TheEther
Guru

Re: Netgear R7000 as repeater

It's interesting that a device can get an IP address from but then cannot ping the main router.  There's really not much that can go wrong on the repeater.  Try performing a factory reset, then try again.

Message 8 of 10
adlerhn
Aspirant

Re: Netgear R7000 as repeater

I have reset the router to factory defaults and tried again to configure the Repeater mode of Asuswrt-Merlin 380.65_0. However, the same issue persists: I cannot reach the parent router.

In the end I have done this configuration with Advanced Tomato 3.4 138, which does not have a Repeater mode. These are the main steps in case anyone else wants to achieve the same:

* DHCP disabled in the repeating router.

* I have set the 2.4G wireless network as an Access Point, which is the one my devices will connect to. As 2.4G has higher penetration, the 2.4G signal seems to arrive well to all the rooms.
* Channel Width for the 2.4G network: 20 MHz, to minimise collision with the neighbours.

* The 5G network, I have set as Wireless Ethernet Bridge, using the same SSID and password as the 5G network of the parent router.

* Everything else: as per default.

Now, the only downside is that the repeated network is *much* slower than the original one. With both routers side by side and my PC next to them, connecting directly to the parent router I get about 235 Mbps down / 25 Mbps up. But connecting to the repeater router I only get about 25 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up. Which is not too bad, but it is almost 10% of the speed of the original router.

I had already read that when using a repeater the throughtput would be halved, since the same radio has to be used for sending and receiving from the parent router and from clients. On the other hand, I am using an entirely separate band for connecting to the parent router (5G) and the clients (2.4G), so I was hoping this not to be an issue, or at least not to lose 90% of the banwidth.

Message 9 of 10
William10a
Master

Re: Netgear R7000 as repeater

There will be a loss in the band witdh as you have to recieve and transmitt like you said. There is a price to pay trying by wifi a better way may be if two locations are the on the same circuit breaker box you could try a power line type of lan connection you still loss a little speed. The choice is yours

Message 10 of 10
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