Hello guys, Background: My house used to be two houses and so there's an impenetrable (well, to wifi anyway) wall right down the middle. To combat this I've been using a homeplug system from our router to a switch in my room, and having this side of the house wired up to the switch. This has been fine up until a few days ago when I bought an Asus Transformer Prime that uses wifi only. What I'd like to do it swap the switch to a wifi access point, specifically the one that I bought. It's probably not the best but it'll manage light surfing on my tablet I'm sure and I've had good experiences with them before. I'd ideally like to move seamlessly from the AP wifi to the router wifi and vice-versa (roaming?) but I can live without this. To help, it'll look like: Questions: What do I name the SSID from the access point? The same as the router of different? What about the channel number, same or different? Password? Secondly (and less importantly) when I stream mp3s or something from the pc (which I didn't think to include in the diagram ) that is wired up to the AP and I'm in the ap wifi, does my stream have to go all the way through the network? Will it be: PC>access point>homeplug>router>homeplug>access point>tablet or PC>access point>tablet? Just because the homeplugs aren't really fast enough to do any streaming, and afaik the access point has no router capabilities of it's own. Thank you so much in advance for your help! Jack
Ideally, to move from one to another seemlessly you should have the ssid and key set the same on both - but with how close they are to one another i dont think you should do that. So give it an ssid of whatever you like likewise for channel and password. Is there any way at all you can get rid of the homeplug and run a cat5 cable? It would be FAR superior to the homeplugs... As for scrapping the switch in favour of the ap - i don think you should do this, i think you should just plug the ap into the switch to give you those rj45 ports on the switch AND the ap for wireless. I dont konw if I've answered your questions well or not, ask away, i just got in so my head is still a bit in the clouds ha. but feel free to pm if you want.
Hi Margo, thanks for the quick reply. The access point I'm moving to has 5 ethernet ports built in, in fact I think it's the same switch just with an antennae. The ap I linked to above, and the switch is this one. There is sadly no possibility of moving from homeplugs to wired, believe me I'd love to. Maybe next time we completely redo the house but it wouldn't be easily done to go from downstairs to upstairs and right across the stairs. I had actually considered plugging the ap into the switch, it means I can keep the switch hidden where it is but have the wifi antenna positioned for better signal. Also, I don't buy into the whole 'wifi causes cancer' bull, but the ability to switch of the wifi at night whilst keeping the switch on can only be a good thing.
It should be all good. Whether you scrap the switch, keep the switch, or plug the pc into either i dont think the home plugs will cause a problem with your streaming
As I understand it, roaming will work as long as all AP settings are identical apart from the channel, which should differ so that the two aren't contending with each other. I've personally used InSSIDer to pick an optimal channel. You should also ensure that only one device on your network is performing DHCP assignment (Router). I should add that I've never personally tried this so YMMV. Should be shortest path -- your router only comes into things if it's also a combined switch (which many are) and you're talking to something connected to it, or if you're talking to an IP outwith the local network. I'd also agree with Marco's suggestion of connecting the AP to your existing switch rather than doing away with it altogether -- you didn't mention the speed of your current switch but if it provides gigabit ethernet you'll attain better throughput with devices connected to that than exclusively utilising the 10/100 ethernet connectivity of the AP.
