Range Extender as a local router without internet

[Cwebernator]

I'd love to use my range extender as a simple way to communicate between my mixer (Behringer XR18) and my MacBook air and ipad when I'm performing at venues.

The Behringer mixer can create it's own wi-fi, but this is notoriously unreliable (especially once audience members arrive at the gig usually the wi-fi becomes very unstable and some forum users theorise that with all the mobile phones trying to join the mixer's wi-fi it doesn't allow the actual sound engineer to connect). To avoid this problem, many people connect the mixer to an external router and then use the router's wi-fi signal for the other devices...

I had hoped to use my EX2700 wi-fi extender to perform the task of a router and everything worked at home, but as soon as I went outside of the range of my home network (the one my extender was setup to extend) the extender wouldn't allow devices to connect and displayed a message telling me that I as outside the range of my home network. Since I have no need of internet for using the mixer I had hopes that this setup would work since the N2700 is such a compact little device. Is there a way for it to still function like a wi-fi LAN router even though it's obviously not extending any network?

After that long-winded back-story I'm wondering if there is any setting that would allow me to use this device rather than having to get a different router to perform the task I need.

Thanks very much for any help!

Chris

[TheEther]

The following is untested but I think it will work.  You can enable Internet sharing on your Mac to turn it into the equivalent of a Wi-Fi router.  Go to System Preferences->Sharing->Internet Sharing.  Turn it on.  Set Share your connection to anything except Wi-Fi.  Set To computers using to Wi-Fi.  You will be prompted to enter the settings to create a Wi-Fi network.  You could use the same settings as your real router; this will make it trivial for your extender to connect to it.

Try connecting to this new network with your iPad.  Then connect the Behringer to the extender and test your network.