Trying to extend my wifi in my home with an access point

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DougCBJ

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
190
Just a quick question. I'm trying to get a device that I can run a CAT6 cable to from my Motorola Modem/Router Combo through the basement and hook into in a room across the house because my WIFI doesn't extend to my master bedroom on the second floor well. I don't want a WIFI extender because I read that it just picks up on your current WIFI and extends it farther but at it's degraded rate. I want a WIFI access point (I think that is what it is called) where I can hook the CAT6 cable into and then project WIFI on the other side of the home plus the upstairs, but I don't want a second username and password like I would get by buying a second router. Will the product below allow me to do this?

http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WA...194486_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1414294134&sr=1-1

I prefer something cheap and easy to set up which the Ubiquiti Networks UniFi AP Enterprise WiFi System seems like it may be a difficult set up. Thanks for any help.
 
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I'm no expert so I'm just throwing something out there I tried some time ago that worked relatively well. I know u don't want to try a repeater but if you have a spare laptop, you can extend/repeat the signal to at least try it out. Sometimes running cable isn't optimal....
 
Unifi difficult?........

I don't think it get's any less complicated than Unifi AP's. They are reasonably priced, work great and are DEAD SIMPLE to configure.. If you can't configure one then you have bigger issues than wireless connectivity. Since you were able to actually type a post on this forum I'm sure you have the capacity to configure any number of Unifi AP's without any issue AT ALL.
 
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How big is your house? you may be able to stick the Unify AP in the middle of the house and cover everything. I put one in a friends home a few years ago, in the center of the 4500sq/ft house and it gets excellent coverage.
 
mine is only around 2000sq/ft. If I do just use the Unify AP do I disable the wifi option on my modem/router combo? If so I wish I could go back a year and not by the $200 all-in-one Motorola modem and just get the $60 modem XD
 
Buy a UniFi place in other room, configure modem/router and UniFi with same SSID and WPA/WPA2 key, use different channels (i.e. 1, 6 or 11).
 
Zepher said:
How big is your house? you may be able to stick the Unify AP in the middle of the house and cover everything. I put one in a friends home a few years ago, in the center of the 4500sq/ft house and it gets excellent coverage.
Click to expand...

Lol I'm in 2600 with 4 unifis. F
 
My vote is for unifi, their seamless roaming is nice. Every option you will ever need, but kind of $$$. To do it right you really need 2 ap's.

A chaper alternative that isn't the fastest, but just plain works is open-mesh. I've done a few installs with all wired nodes and they just plain work. Easy to set up and cheap, but they don't support vlans. They do come with a guest network support built in though. Open-mesh also does seamless roaming.

As you said, don't mess with repeater mode because of the loss of bandwidth.
 
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My question is similar to the OP's. I have a UVerse router/gateway and I bought an Unifi AP, it works well but now I have two networks with the same SSID, security, and passwords. Each one covers about half the house.

What I would like is just one network that covers the whole house so I don't have to reconnect when going from one end of the house to the other . I think this is called seamless roaming.

Is this possible with the Unifi AP or do I have to buy another and disable the radio in the UVerse router or just ignore it?
 
burchdb said:
My question is similar to the OP's. I have a UVerse router/gateway and I bought an Unifi AP, it works well but now I have two networks with the same SSID, security, and passwords. Each one covers about half the house.

What I would like is just one network that covers the whole house so I don't have to reconnect when going from one end of the house to the other . I think this is called seamless roaming.

Is this possible with the Unifi AP or do I have to buy another and disable the radio in the UVerse router or just ignore it?
Click to expand...

If the networks really have the same SSID, Security and Password then the client will roam to the other AP automatically. If the signal strength is too strong (aka the AP cells overlapping more than 40%) then the client may be sticking to the original AP it first connects to. So then you need to turn down the power levels on both the Gateway and the UniFi. Depending on how large your home is low power on the UniFi and 25% power on the Gateway should work just fine.
 
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