Top floor WN604 wireless AP wired to wifi router downstairs
Hi
I'd be grateful for a bit of simple network advice.
I live in a tall house. The master phone socket is on the ground floor and I've installed a Netgear DGN2200v3 ASDL wireless router with the settings pretty much as out of the box (apart from the password). It's all working fine.
The wifi doesn't reach the top floor though, so I've run a Cat5 cable to a FS605v3 switch up there, with a couple of desktop PCs connected by ethernet.
Hopefully this is pretty standard. Now my question:
I've installed a Netgear WN604 wireless N150 access point up there and connected it to the switch, but what's the best way to set it up? As a wireless access point? a repeater? a wireless bridge? a wireless extender (if that's different)? I'm confused by the terminology.
If as an access point, do I just accept the defaults with DHCP client disabled? And assuming that's right, can I use the same SSID name as the router downstairs and WPA2-PSK with the same passphrase? Will this enable wifi devices to transfer smoothly from one to the other without the user doing anything? Or should the SSIDs & passphrases be separate, so there are two distinct networks to log on to and hopefully you get the stronger one?
I've read about the full duplex vs half duplex issue, but is that relevant? My needs are typical home / soho - browsing, iplayer, downloads etc.
All advice welcome - hopefully I'm not the first to want this setup!
Re: Top floor WN604 wireless AP wired to wifi router downstairs
In your situation I'd do the following:
1: Set up the WN604 with a static IP (so NOT as a DHCP client) that isn't in the DGN2200's DHCP range (you might need to change the DHCP range on the router to make room). Note the IP address for future reference (I tend to set my APs to single/double figure IPs and write the last number of the address on the label on the back)
2: You can set the SSIDs and passwords to be the same on both the router and the AP and your wifi client (laptop etc) should in theory pick up the strongest one. If you have problems you can always change the SSIDs later
I can't see any massive issues with the setup your looking at so you should be fine.
Yes, you set up as a wireless access point, with a cabled connection coming from your router. If the DGN has an IP of 192.168.0.1, keep the first 3 set of digits (octets), and change the last, eg 192.168.0.200 for the access point.
A repeater/ wireless extender is where the 2nd device receives the wireless signal from the router, and extends/ repeats. This will work on the same floor, but not in your situation where you have no signal on the top floor.
Your other questions were answered in earlier posts.
