Extending WiFi; different subnets?

J

JaimesBeam

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I would like to extend the coverage of my home WiFi network. I have an Airport Extreme 802.11n+Gigabit Ethernet as my central router which connects to my cable modem.

Unfortunately I don't have a couple of Airport Express gadgets handy to extend my Airport/WiFi coverage. My house/etc is very long and narrow, so one Airport is not going to cover everything.

I do have a couple of other WiFi routers that should be able to function as WiFi access points to extend Internet WiFi access to my Office and Winery; a NetGear and a SMC 2804WBRP-G.

It seems that I should be able to set these two gadgets up two different ways that should work
to extend my WiFi coverage.

1) I should be able to connect one of these routers WAN port via ethernet to my Airport router (which routes/DHCP/manages the subnet 192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0) and have it route/ DHCP/ manage a separate subnet 192.168.2.1/255.255.255.0) Each WLAN would route a separate subnet, and use DHCP to assign addresses to computers that appear on their subnet, and route Internet traffic back to the main AirportEx router. But this doesn't seem to work.

2) I should be able to disable DHCP on the secondary router, and only have the Airport hand out IP addresses. I should be able to disable routing, connect the Airport to the second router through one of the second routers LAN Ethernet ports, and have one subnet that covers all my local Ethernet and WiFi networks. But this doesn't seem to work either! Perhaps disabling routing on the second router isn't even necessary?

Any Ideas? Thanks, Jim!
 
I don't think any old wireless router can be used to "extend" a wireless network -- they have to have specific support for the WDA standard (or something like that).

You could, however, set up multiple wireless access points across your house with as many routers as you want -- the only problem is that you cannot "roam" from network to network and maintain connection (you will disconnect from one and reconnect to another -- a bad thing if you're in the middle of downloading something).

You should be able to set up a wireless router with its WAN port connected to the ethernet port of your AirPort. Then, configure the new router to obtain an IP via DHCP and create a new wireless network with DHCP enabled (I have this same configuration at home, albeit ever so slightly different).
 
If you read my message you would see that I wasn't trying to set up a roaming WLAN.

As I had said, I did try to set up the secondary wireless router with it's own subnet, and for some reason it didn't work. I'm trying to figure out why!

Jim
 
I've only done this with Netgear and Linksys models - not sure about SMC.
Don't connect the internet/WAN port of the "second" routers to anything. Connect from A/Ext Lan to Lan of second router. I guess you already tried this? Use only one subnet. Turn off DHCP and NAT on the "second" routers. Change transmit channel on the "second" routers to other numbers - like 4 and 7.

Worked for me at 2 different locations.
 
JaimesBeam said:
If you read my message you would see that I wasn't trying to set up a roaming WLAN.
Click to expand...
I did read your message... and you did specifically say you wanted to set up a "roaming WLAN," more than once:

I would like to extend the coverage of my home WiFi network. I have an Airport Extreme 802.11n+Gigabit Ethernet as my central router which connects to my cable modem.

Unfortunately I don't have a couple of Airport Express gadgets handy to extend my Airport/WiFi coverage. My house/etc is very long and narrow, so one Airport is not going to cover everything.

I do have a couple of other WiFi routers that should be able to function as WiFi access points to extend Internet WiFi access to my Office and Winery; a NetGear and a SMC 2804WBRP-G.

It seems that I should be able to set these two gadgets up two different ways that should work
to extend my WiFi coverage.
Click to expand...
"Extending" wi-fi coverage means "roaming WLAN." When you "extend" a wireless LAN, you don't have two subnets... two DHCP servers... etc. You have one subnet, one DHCP server, and two (or more) wireless routers -- one of which functions serving DHCP, DNS, and all manner of other network processes, and another wireless router that acts as a "repeater" that picks up the signal and "extends" the coverage.

What I hear you asking for now is not to "extend" your wireless network, but to have one of two things happen:

1) You want two (or more) completely separate wireless networks
2) You want two (or more) completely separate wireless networks, one of which gets internet access from the other wireless router

I have a similar setup at my house, where I have two wireless routers with two different SSIDs and two different networks. The first (2-Wire AT&T piece of crap) is connected to a fiber feed via the WAN port and has several wireless clients as well as several wired clients.

The second wireless router (AirPort Extreme) has its WAN port connected to a LAN port on the 2-Wire, and is set to "share an external IP address". The external IP of this router is set to be in the DMZ of the first router so that all traffic not bound to machines on the first router gets passed to the second router.

This does not "extend" my network at all, since there are two distinct networks going on. I may have "larger" wireless coverage in my house, but it's most definitely not an "extension" of a single wireless network.

Can you try setting up a scenario like that and see if it works?
 
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