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Second router as WiFi extender

Ismorsman741
Just joined

Hello all, 

I know this post has been recreated in so many ways, so i appreciate any help in fixing this issue i'm having. Also, apologies in advance for any errors in terminology i'm very new to this!

I have a virgin media hub 3.0 downstairs, i have followed all the VM videos about positioning etc etc. i have always had poor signal upstairs, if i try and stream something on netflix sometimes it works, sometimes it buffers for ages, so i decided to but a second router (Wavlink Wi-Fi router Aerial G2) and run an ethernet cable to the second router via the LAN ports. I now have 1 VM wifi network, and 2 networks from my wavlink, i believe these are the 2.4gHz and 5ghZ signals. 

I have done this, and set it up so that anything upstairs is connected to one of the Wavlink wifi networks, and anything downstairs is connected to the VM network. below are the questions i need solving

1: Do i need to change any of the settings on either the VM or wavlink router so that they are talking to each other correctly and not clashing IP address' etc, i've tried reading in to this, but when i get to setting the 'channel' the VM router is on i can't seem to do that in the settings page. if i do, could someone please give me a step by step guide on how to do this (i know that will be hard but if you could it would be the biggest help)

2: is there a way in which i can alter the setting so that the networks, are all one and i do not need to go around connecting everything to the correct router? similar to if you are in a large building, you only connect to one network, but throughout the building there are various routers that your device automatically connects to (i'm assuming the one with the strongest signal)

3. i often still have issues with my internet, i'll have my upstairs fire stick, connected to my upstairs wifi router, and it will drop out of connection, so i look on my phone and my phone still has connection, so i will turn my phone into a hotspot and connect the fire stick to my phone, that is connected to the upstairs router and it seems to solve the problem, so for some reason that's possible but direct connection to the wifi router seems to cause a problem? and its a very new fire stick so i do not believe that the issue is with the fire stick. 

3 REPLIES 3

Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

You need to setup the G2 as described in the manual under LAN Bridge (AP)   You should not be running two routers on the same network as this will cause issues.  Split the VM SSID into two different names, e.g. append _5 to the end of the 5Ghz network.  Then name the 2.4 and 5Ghz SSID's on the G2 to have the same names and passwords as the VM Router.  This will allow you to move from the VM one to the other G2 one.

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ravenstar68
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

I can't fault Adduxi's post however for what it's worth here's my thoughts

Even if you don't run the Wavlink in Lan bridge mode (Although I'd certainly recommend this), it's still possible to have it on the network in router mode, however you need to consider the following.

  1. You have to set the Wavlink's IP address so it doesn't clash with the Suprhub's but it's still in the Hubs range, (I use 192.168.0.1 for the Superhub and 192.168.0.254 for the second device)
  2. You connect devices LAN to LAN - which you have done.
  3. You turn off DHCP on one device, if you're not too comfortable with networking I'd recommend turning off DHCP on the Wavlink, however you can configure DHCP on the Wavlink if you wish.
  4. Get everything workinng on the LAN first then configure the wireless on each device, so that they are identical  - As Adduxi has said this wil ensure that devices roam seamlessly from router to router.

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The key thing that that both routers must be on the same LAN segment to allow devices to connect to the routers, so the seconday router must have an IP address (best outside the DHCP reservation range) which is the same as the main router but with a different fourth octet, and have its DHCP server disabled as you only want one DHCP server which is still running on the hub in router mode.

So, if the hub's IP address is 192.168.0.1 and its DHCP reservation range is (say) from 192.168.0.10 to 192.168.0.254, you can statically set the Wavlink's IP address outside this range to something like 192.168.0.2. The Wavlink's subnet mask must be the same as the hub's which is 255.255.255.0. You'll need to reboot the Wavlink.

I would recommend leaving the WiFi alone until you are happy that this extended LAN works, and only then attempt to make the SSIDs identical.

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Hub 5, TP-Link TL-SG108S 8-port gigabit switch, 360
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