We use a wireless repeater (Edimax) here. It has a different ESSID but
all the other parameters must be the same as the original transmitter
(took me ages to work that one out!). The ESSID can be the same too
but I like to be able to choose which box I connect to. The one
problem we have is that you get considerable latency delays on some
traffic, so for example samba is an order of magnitude slower at
transferring large files. It doesn't seem to affect internet downloads
much though. Oh and every now and again (4 times a year?) we have to
switch everything off and on again. Reminds me of my Windows days!
The repeater, once set up using a wired connection, just needs a mains
connection; it's a bit like magic really!
FWIW I use a powerline adapter to get the LAN to the first transmitter
so it can sit in a central place in the house. The wireless repeater
then just has to fill in a blank spot upstairs.
HTH, Peter
On 14 June 2011 14:37, Rob Malpass <linux@???> wrote:
> Hi all
>
>
>
> Does anyone have experience of wifi repeaters? I bought one [1] from
> Novatech for under 40 quid but its manual is awful and badly translated. I
> _think_ I've set it up as a wireless repeater but it's not making things any
> easier. The signal strength according to the "bar chart" on the clients is
> much better but it connects with "limited or no availability" making me
> think that the link between the repeater and the router (which is wifi
> itself) isn't working. A few questions if anyone can help:
>
>
>
> 1) Setup requires connecting via a cable to the LAN and logging into
> 192.168.0.254 from a browser - no problem there - that's how I configured
> it.
>
> However, and I believe this may be crucial, I have not found anywhere how to
> set this up on its own. For example, with it configured, I would guess I
> need to unplug it, relocate it such it's equidistant between the wireless
> router and the client machine, plug it in to the power (no LAN cable) and
> all will be well. Is this not so?
>
> 2) The device has several "modes" of which I've set it to Wireless Repeater
> and configured it with exactly the same parameters (same name, channel,
> SSID, pre-shared key) etc as the wireless router. Is this right or should
> I have called it mynet2 which extends mynet as opposed to mynet (mynet being
> the name of the original wifi network)?
>
> 3) As it wasn't working, I recently reconnected it up in the study via lan
> cable and was dismayed to see it asking me to go through the wizard. I
> would presume that all the time it had been relocated without the LAN cable,
> it had been wanting this too - am I wrong?
>
> 4) I guess in summary my question is: do wireless repeaters require a cabled
> connection to the LAN or do they take the existing wifi connection and boost
> it? This is what I asked of the Novatech employee before buying it and he
> was convinced it would do the trick - but then again I guess he was a
> salesman!
>
>
>
> On its way to me at the moment is a powerline (ethernet over mains) device
> (which works well elsewhere in our house) so I'm hoping that if I can't use
> [1] as a repeater then I can at least use it as a humble access point
> connected to the powerline such that a better result can be achieved - but I
> never like to be "beaten" by things like this.
>
>
>
> Any advice very welcome.
>
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Rob
>
>
>
>
>
> [1]
> http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/networking/wirelessnetworking/wirelessaccesspoints/tplink/tl-wa901nd.html
>
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