I would like to extend the range of my wifi at home as I get a very poor signal upstairs at the back of the house, where most of my pc stuff is. My router lives in the lounge downstairs, next to the cable modem. I've been told I can use a second wireless router upstairs but I'd need to turn off DHCP? Would I end up having two SSIDs, and would this cause a problem? I have a USR router sat doing nothing, and don't want to buy a dedicated wireless access point..
1) Unless someone else says otherwise, you do not need to turn off DHCP, my routers were perfectly happy to coexist without me changing any settings from the default so I will assume your will too. 2) Having two SSID's will not be a problem. Laptops connecting to your network will see two routers (the upstairs one and the downstairs one) and they can connect to either one.
it depends how you set it, you could use the same ssid and channel. the problem with 2 different ssids is you need to setup 2 network connections, and make sure they are on different channels. i presume your going to run a cable or use homeplugs to the second router, or are they both wds compatible. you dont need to turn off dhcp if you are not bothered about network shares. if however you want network shares to work properly, you need to turn it off
As previously stated, in you're connecting the 2 routers by ethernet cable / over homeplug adapters, best thing is to turn off the DHCP server on the second router and have the primary one handle all of that. As for SSID's, I have both of my routers set to the same name, channel, encryption etc, that way it's a seamless connection, my laptopn latches onto which ever signal is strongest. But for the purposes of testing, or if you just prefer, no great shakes in having 2 seperate SSID's.
set them both up with the same SSID and WPA/Security key and disable DHCP on one (let the other handle that), that way windows only sees one network and freely picks the stongest signal, at least within my network it does (esspically since i couldn't get a signal in the garden during the summer, set up a second router and can walk from the front the the back without loss of connection.!
Setup the 2nd router in bridging mode, if possible, this avoids the expense & hassle of laying cable or buying new routers.
You 100% must disable DHCP on the second router, and obviously, change its LAN IP so it doesn't clash with your current router. You will end up with the situation where both routers give out DHCP in the same IP range and will both give themselves as the default gateway, however the WAN interface on one of them will not be connected to the internet. Also, its quite possible that both DHCP routers would give the same client IP to two different devices, which will just clash then!
you are of course presuming he won't use the wan port, if he doesn't use the wan port then yes he must turn off dhcp. on the other hand i am guilty of presuming he would use the wan port, in which case he doesnt need to turn of dhcp
I did something similar last night. I connected the second router to the first router using a LAN port, disabled dhcp and upnp on the second router. I also changed the ip on the second router to something within the range of the first router, and reserved that ip on the first router, you don't have to reserve it, but it helps if the second router isn't always on and helps when coming back from downtime. At the moment the second router is basically a switch, but when I enable the wireless it will be same ssid and password but a different channel. Though in early tests the original router is still kicking the second routers ass lol.
Indeed I am In this case if he uses the WAN port while attempting to use the router to extend the LAN it won't work at all, as it'll be a network-split so I'm also guilty of assuming that is obvious knowledge!
set it up in repeater mode, if the firmware doesn't have a repeater mode, check and see if the harware you are wanting to use is openwrt / ddwrt compatible, as those firmwares do have that option. in repeater mode, it will take the signal from the first router, and just simply push it farther, which sounds like exactly what you want to accomplish. it also won't require having any ethernet cable attached.
