Using Router as Range Extender

[Citroënbender]

I’m not sure if this is possible; that’s a big part of my query.

The new router came with Telstra’s NBN two weeks ago; a fancy thing and apparently the latest/greatest from them. My old router is old; an Archer D5 from TP-Link’s AC1200 series. 802.11ac/b/g/n wifi standards.

What I’m wondering about, is.

Can I configure it as a range extender, but in a way that allows its Ethernet ports to be used by devices?

I’ve done some reading, but starting to get confused. Most writing up of how to configure devices like this as an access point, assume you have an incoming LAN signal via cable. That’s different. I want it to receive the wifi signal and then allow me to plug in an Ethernet cable to connect to a device.

So - as per the first line - is this even possible?

[arm79]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

Can I configure it as a range extender, but in a way that allows its Ethernet ports to be used by devices?

I’ve done some reading, but starting to get confused. Most writing up of how to configure devices like this as an access point, assume you have an incoming LAN signal via cable. That’s different. I want it to receive the wifi signal and then allow me to plug in an Ethernet cable to connect to a device.

I'm 99.99% sure the technical term for what you want to achieve is a "Wireless Bridge".

Bridging the gap between 2 routers using wireless rather than a cable making the router act as a go between for the ethernet ports on it.

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

So - as per the first line - is this even possible?

Yes it can be done, but in my experience the router needs to have a Wireless Bridging mode built into the software. It rearranges how the interfaces work and route data.

But the specs don't seem have a Wireless Bridging mode for this router.

https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-netw...specifications

BUUUUTTTT...

It does appear this router has a WDS option, Wireless Distribution System. New fangled version.

Difference being is that it acts as not only a wireless bridge, but a range extender (using a new network name) and a bridge for the ethernet ports.

The difference is a WB will take over the wireless device in the router and use it solely to communicate with the main router. WDS does both the communication with the main router and still acts as a wireless access point using the same wireless device.

From personal experience WDS can be very lacking and temperamental unless you are running it on a powerful router with a good WDS software implementation.

I've always found it dramatically dropped speeds and can be patchy, appearing to drop in and out. I assume because you are asking the wireless device and its associated software to do multiple different types of communication at once.

But not to say it wont work for you or not work well, so its worth a crack.

The user guide on the TP Link website seems to be corrupt, but this one works: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/86...Archer-D5.html

Download the document and search for WDS in it and follow the steps and hopefully it works.

You'll also need to disable the WAN connection if possible. Just not having it plugged in or connected is normally enough, but if you can turn it off it helps. You'll also need to turn off DHCP on this router. You'll only need one DHCP server on the network or you'll have problems. Once the wireless connection is working devices connected to the old router should request IP's from the new one.

When you turn off DHCP you'll only be able to access the router by entering a fixed IP address on your PC when connecting to it alone.

If all that doesn't work you can download free third party customisable firmware replacements that are extremely powerful and flexible. Haven't done it for a looooooonnnng time, but DD-WRT and OPEN-WRT come to mind.

[Crazy Dazz]

Put simply, yes you probably can.
Easiest way is to logon to the router, see what options are available, and try them out.
A lot of these issues come down more to practical considerations (does it actually work?) rather than what is theoretically possible.

One option you might want to experiment with, is whether its capable of running it off an Ethernet cable, and simply using it in original configuration as 2nd network. Unfortunately it doesn't appear to have a dedicated WAN port (or "in" port) unlike routers designed to be used with a separate modem.

[b0son]

Just turn off the DHCP. You now have a wireless switch.

[Citroënbender]

Thanks all. I’ve barely untangled myself from all the Home Care acronyms and jargon - of course something had to fill its place.

I’ve packed it up for the evening, but will persevere next time the rain sets in - won’t be long; probably Friday.

Seriously pondering the logic of (longer term) persevering with a Windows-based desktop. It was handy when I was bashing out reports all the time, but it seems mainly now a repository for files.

[arm79]

I suppose the basic summary is that yes, it can be done. And all you need to do is RTFM (something truly against the core being of any male), sit down one afternoon and tick some boxes on the interface and it will all be done.

Another way is to use some of the powerline ethernet adaptors to bridge the 2 routers via the LAN ports.

I have a couple of old Telstra smart modems that I have setup as wireless extenders in the house and use the powerline adaptors to connect them all. Have great wifi and ethernet service at all important parts of the house.

One of the great things with the NBN (or at least with Telstra NBN anyways) is that if you have suitable devices and appropriate mobile plans you can enable WiFi calling on the phone and it will make all voice calls through the NBN connection when in Wifi range.

If you have spotty voice service in your home, this sets you up with perfect clarity 110% quality calls all day every day.

We use Telstra NBN but our phones are Optus Prepaid. So its seems this feature works various providers and networks. We can't live without it now.

[Citroënbender]

I’ve had the wifi calling thing for a few years, possibly being in all-Telstra households they facilitated it within their own network first?

The terminology has been a real boost in the answers here, I was close to drawing a picture of what I wanted! Now I know I’m creating a wireless bridge the googling gets a bit easier.

[arm79]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

I’ve had the wifi calling thing for a few years, possibly being in all-Telstra households they facilitated it within their own network first?

Might be my misunderstanding there. I thought Wifi calling came about with NBN services. I didn't think it was available on ADSL. Although Voice over LTE has been around for a while.

But they were features that slowly filtered down. Started with business and postpaid accounts at Telstra and eventually became available on prepaid services.

Same with Optus. Started in business a while back, then made it to postpaid accounts and only to prepaid accounts early last year. Which is when we finally picked it up.

Telstra did have it long before Optus overall though.

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

The terminology has been a real boost in the answers here, I was close to drawing a picture of what I wanted! Now I know I’m creating a wireless bridge the googling gets a bit easier.

Good luck with it all.

[zilo]

Try a Netgear Ex6200.

I have extended my wi-fi 6klms over water to an island offshore with one.

A hundred bucks and it does 2g and 5g wifi bands, has detachable antennas so you can fit an external aerial etc etc.

Plug in, run the wizard and it just works.

But IMHO ..To use an old router as a wifi extender its always more reliable to run a cat 5 cable to the destination and plug it into a WAN port on the remote router. It then also can have it's own range of addresses.
If you don't want to run a cat5 cable them ethernet over power adapters will work.
(Though if you are buying a pair you may as well get some that produce a WIFI signal at the destination, thereby ditching the old router)

[Citroënbender]

Yes, a long Cat 5e cable is doing the job now as/when required. It’s got to be packed up when not used, due to the cat having an obsession with attacking cords, hoses, the vacuum and anything else vaguely herpetic.

Until I finish my in-roof cabling and related wall outlets, the wireless bridge proposal is my next step, making use of what “junk” I have to hand. If I can’t get it to work in the next week or so, I’ll just rush my cabling.

[.:4:.]

What is the wireless range you need to achieve?

[Citroënbender]

About 8m in a straight line.

[.:4:.]

Is the nbn modem just a modem router? I know im asking basic question but all the nbn modems ive seen are wireless routers too. The thing most nbn installers do not say which catches some people out is the network name and password is different to their old network. So itsas simple as looking on the sticker on the nbn modem and that should have a sticker with the network name and password to connect to wifi.

[Citroënbender]

The new modem/router is wifi 6, downgradable to wifi 4. It’s a pretty fancy piece of kit (battery backup and 4G SIM backup), apparently Telstra only started supplying them a few weeks ago.

It’s all working fine, speeds are good. But until I’m properly cabled to the “home orifice” there’s the need for a workaround. I can’t install a wifi 4/6 card on my desktop without upgrading to W10/11 and that update would (in common sense) require a newer HDD as it’s getting a bit iffy.

So a cable in, is the simple solution - and I’ve outlined why a floor cable is not suiting me well, which is where the wireless bridge comes in.

[.:4:.]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

The new modem/router is wifi 6, downgradable to wifi 4. It’s a pretty fancy piece of kit (battery backup and 4G SIM backup), apparently Telstra only started supplying them a few weeks ago.

It’s all working fine, speeds are good. But until I’m properly cabled to the “home orifice” there’s the need for a workaround. I can’t install a wifi 4/6 card on my desktop without upgrading to W10/11 and that update would (in common sense) require a newer HDD as it’s getting a bit iffy.

So a cable in, is the simple solution - and I’ve outlined why a floor cable is not suiting me well, which is where the wireless bridge comes in.

You should be able to simply plug a patch lead from a lan port into a lan port on your old modem router and the old one should function as a wireless router. Thats what i did for my mum when she went from adsl to nbn. The nbn modem didnt wireless very well compared to the netgear adsl modem she had, so i just plugged them up and it solved that issue.

[Citroënbender]

That doesn’t solve my problem, the desktop computer has no wireless card. It’s always been on a cable.

[.:4:.]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

That doesn’t solve my problem, the desktop computer has no wireless card. It’s always been on a cable.

Oooh, that makes sense.
You can go to officeworks and get usb wifi dongles, theyre not expensive and work. I used one for years when i had a desktop pc. It was an old ibm with windows xp.

[.:4:.]

Thats what i used

[Citroënbender]

I tried one about three years ago, apparently some mismatch meant that it didn’t work with my full-fat W7 or main board or whatever. The problem was documented on the ‘net. I think XP was different there.

[.:4:.]

Thats strange, the u in usb stands for universal.
The wifi usb adapter plugged in and installed the driver by itself. Which kind of makes sense as it was something to facilitate internet access to a machine without internet access. Then it was as simple as select network and enter password.

[arm79]

The fog and cobwebs have receded from the deepest reaches of whats left of my mind and reminded me of the TP-Link TL-MR3020.

These things are a mini multi mode travel router. About 6cm square. The have a built in Wireless Bridge mode (among others) and in terms of setup and use they are a living physical example of the ultimate implementation of the KISS principle.

Flip a switch on the side to the appropriate mode, plug it in, boot it up, access setup webpage and tick boxes and it just works.

https://www.tp-link.com/au/home-netw...3020/#overview

The last time I remember having my hands on one (or actually a few of these) of these would be about 10 years ago.

So imagine my surprise to see that TP-Link still makes them and you can still buy them for $35 to $45. Around the same price when I last bought them.

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/184379149649

If you don't have any success getting the WDS to work on your old router then this will be your quick and cheap answer.

Work colleagues and I used to use these routers with our then brand spanking new Galaxy S2 phones.

The company I worked for had Telstra Business accounts and there must have been something special about them because the phone would run at the max 3G speed all day every day without question, a wonderful 21Mbps back then. The phones would run so hot we'd have to put them in ice packs.

We'd use the 3020 as a 3G to Ethernet bridge so we could plug it straight into our home networks to get speeds far higher than the sh*tty ADSL that was available in our areas.

[Vesper Martini]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

I tried one about three years ago, apparently some mismatch meant that it didn’t work with my full-fat W7 or main board or whatever. The problem was documented on the ‘net. I think XP was different there.

They should work pretty easily, you can get adaptors with Bluetooth also pretty darn cheap off ebay.

are you using winXP?

another option is a powerline adaptor about $100

[b0son]

Originally Posted by .:4:.

Thats strange, the u in usb stands for universal.
The wifi usb adapter plugged in and installed the driver by itself. Which kind of makes sense as it was something to facilitate internet access to a machine without internet access. Then it was as simple as select network and enter password.

Depends on the version of windows. I see mention of XP, and IIRC, XP required you to install the driver (either from disk or by downloading). Even then, some wifi chipsets didnt always play nice. I had a netgear wifi stick that didnt work with netgear's driver (because the stick was older and didnt have support in the latest windows version), but I was able to work out who the wifi chipset manufacturer was and was able to install one of their generic drivers.

USB itself can be flaky. I've had to try several ports before I found one that device would work from.

[Charliewool]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

About 8m in a straight line.

Is that 8 metres or 8 mile?
I tried a heap of supposedly “long range” routers, and extenders to reach my gate security cameras (200 metres from router) and for the smart TV down in the pool rancho (120 metres)
Last resort was this… https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-netw...ter/archer-c9/
And works like a charm (3yrs now) TV never buffers and gate cams both perfect.

[Citroënbender]

Eight metres, not miles. I’m only on a small suburban creek block in Sydney.

The old USB wifi dongle that never worked, still doesn’t work - I tried it yesterday evening with updated drivers, multiple ports and despite the proprietary installation software telling me it was working properly, Windows (7) was not having a bar of it. So that one is out.

If I can’t make the other router work, I’ll bring forward my fixed cabling and just leave the mechs loose without plates while I wait for the walls to dry enough for sealer-primer.

[Vesper Martini]

There is a free upgrade patch for windows 7 to win 10, though it may try and take you to win 11 now which is a lot more demanding.

otherwise you can buy a wifi dongle specified for windows 7 as per about for $12 on ebay or $6 if you want to wait from china

[.:4:.]

Has the router been plugged in via patch lead to the pc and logged into to check the settings? From memory its a command like 192.168.2.0 or something. There might be a setting in there that can be altered to make it a receiver.

[zilo]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

The new modem/router is wifi 6, downgradable to wifi 4. It’s a pretty fancy piece of kit (battery backup and 4G SIM backup), apparently Telstra only started supplying them a few weeks ago.

.

Nah...its 5G backup...just had one delivered for a new install.

Also...if your wi-fi won't go 8 metres then you may just need an external antenna...

[oldel]

Originally Posted by Vesper Martini

They should work pretty easily, you can get adaptors with Bluetooth also pretty darn cheap off ebay.

are you using winXP?

another option is a powerline adaptor about $100

I'm 20+ metres, 2 doors and 3 brick walls away from my modem. I tried usb wifi and yeah, doesn't work on a PC, you need more power and antennas up high.

While wifi works with phones or tablets this far away from the wifi router, desktop PCs or my old laptop don't because they're not inbuilt with adequate antennas or designed around that wifi comm function.

Anyway, the solution to my circa 2008 win7 PC is the pcie asus ac68 with antennas. I've been using it for 5 years without problems, just with the standard nbn/telstra modem so far away. The 3x antennas of my asus pce-68 sits 1M above the PC, on top of one of my speakers.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ASUS+PCE+68

I did try the tiny usb dongle from asus, and another that has antennas attached to the back of the device (which wouldn't function really being on the back of a huge PC tower so low, and the furthest point)
The asus 68 pcie with a 1m lead and remote antenna I can mount higher on my speaker or desk has worked fine on my old w7 system for 5 years.

E: I'll try to find one of my old "failed" ones for you, 8M should be easy for anything I tried but just didn't work for my 20m. Most of them are win7 vintage.
I've got one of these https://www.asus.com/au/Networking-I...USB-AC53-Nano/ that worked on my laptop for 8M, just not on my desktop 20M away.