Access Point/Router Setup Help

Hey dudes,

Massive networking noob here, seeking aid.

I’ve recently decided that I need some wi-fi connectivity in my room where my main rig is. I’m currently running my CAT cabling from my lounge-room, where the trusty ASUS RT-N66U Dark Knight is situated, to my room. Although the Dark Knight has wireless capability, smaller devices such as my phone struggle to get a solid signal while in my room.

I was wondering how I would proceed, do I need an access point to bolster the signal? And if so, how would one go about setting that up?

Either get an access point and a switch and connect them to the ethernet cable you already have in your room along with your computer, or get a router and disable DHCP and use that instead. If you use the same SSID and password on both wireless networks they will appear as a single network to your devices, although it may work out better to have different names as devices tend not to disconnect from one access point until the signal is completely lost. So you can end up connected to the weaker signal and you'd have to disconnect and connect again to switch the the stronger signal source.

Using different channels on both networks will give you better overall performance as they won't be sharing the bandwidth of a single channel, but if you live in an area with lots of wireless channels then sticking to t a single channel may work out better. Use something like wifi analyser on your phone to see what networks are around and what channels they're using. Try to stick to channels 1, 6, and 11 as these don't overlap. Using an overlapping channel will interfere with the neighbouring channels and reduce your performance.

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Cheers Dex, will definitely check out that wi-fi analyser!

So pretty much the physical configuration would look something like this.

Dark Knight > Gigabit Switch > Access Point + Main Rig

Yep, easy as that. You can also use a router as it includes a switch and an access point, just ignore the WAN port and disable DHCP and stuff like that.

Awesome! Thanks for the help!

I'll track down some prices for routers and what not, see what I can find. That Dark Knight has been pretty beastly so far haha

Do as the above mentioned, set channel 2.4 GHz to either 1, 6, or 11 (check which are in use you do not want a band that is taken), and I would enable jumbo packet frames, and while your're at it enable port triggering in your router if you haven't already.

As far as DHCP goes, I set all my access points as static, I leave the subnet mask 255.255.255. And i leave all my cleints as dynamic.

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@Dexter_Kane @Dynamic_Gravity

Just found this bad boy, what do you guys think?

It's not gigabit if that matters.

Yeah, nothing in my network is capable of gigabit speeds anyway I realised haha

Well you might aswell get this one then, it's cheaper. http://www.mwave.com.au/product/tplink-tlwr841n-wireless-n300-router-aa80230

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