Need a Wifi Extender

Factual Questions
1

I’m hoping someone here can help me with what I need, because I’m embarrassed to say that as I’ve googled around I only get more confused.

I have an old brick house, and all the ceilings are plaster with a wire mesh behind the plaster. This makes Wifi miserable in the house. The router is in the basement (and for a variety of reasons must stay there). Down there I get reliable 100 Mbit. But as one moves up, it gets worse, until it’s unreliable in my office.

Without getting too long-winded, there’s an easy route to run a cat-5 cable along the sill from the router up to the foyer. So what I’d like to do is run a wire to the foyer (inside the wall) and plug it into a repeater of some sort there. Most of what I find is wireless on both ends, which is what I currently have and it still struggles to get back to the router.

What’s this I’m looking for?

Thanks!

2

I think your search term is still “Wifi extender” you just have to add on “with ethernet port”.

Double check that the ones you have don’t have a port tucked away somewhere already.

3

Have you thought about getting a mesh network, like Orbi or Google Wi-Fi? Then, use your wire from the router in the basement to the main mesh router in the foyer, put one of the mesh in the basement if you need wi-fi down there and the foyer is too far away, and put one of the mesh receivers upstairs or something?

Turn off the wi-fi at the router – you can still be wired to that if that’s what you need it in the basement for, although if you do that, then whatever is connected will be on a different network than anything connected to the mesh.

4

I have an Orbi system, which is wireless, but one of the units has an Ethernet port. I might be mistaken, but I think the port is for connecting a device that does not support WiFi, not for supplying data to be transmitted over WiFi.

5

Right. The extenders that I have do have ethernet- but it only goes to an end-user, not back to the router. That said, they aren’t fancy ones. $80-ish Netgears.

6

Often one of the configurations is to support ethernet on one side and wifi on the other. Often called “Access Point mode.” Some devices have both an “input” and “output” port (whatever that means for bi-directional ethernet)

Anyway, perhaps “Access point” is the better search term. Or go with a mesh network like mentioned above. More expensive, but probably far more reliable.

7

If you have a model number, we can check if they can be configured for “access point mode.” An $80-ish netgear is fancier than a $30-ish netgear for sure.

8

How old is your router? Routers have gotten a lot better in a few years.

I recently upgraded mine from an 8-year old model and went from getting ~60Mbps in the room with the router and ~3 in the farthest corner of the house to getting 300+ almost everywhere (not sure how much more because my cable internet maxes at 300) and 150 in the farthest corner.

One new router is a lot easier and simpler than running cable and configuring two devices.

9

Interesting thought. It’s the router provided by Verizon when we established service in 2018

10

My suggestion would be to run your ethernet connection from your basement and get yourself a wireless mesh system. If you still want wireless in the basement, you can still do this by simply getting an access point (turn off the cheesy one that comes with your router) and wire that in the basement, then wire the second one on your foyer, then use a meshed AP for elsewhere in your house. There are a variety of wireless mesh options. I use the Linksys Velop system…they sell them in 2 and 3 pack systems, and you can wire 2 like I said and have the 3rd as a wireless mesh for other parts of your house. Two wired APs will be a lot better than one wired while trying to use an extender upward. If you don’t like the Linksys option you can just Google Wireless Mesh and you will get a ton of other options…I think Google makes one, for instance, and so does Netgear and Orbi and a bunch of others. I used to have a bunch of Meraki (CISCO) wireless APs I got for free, but I think the Linksys is actually easier to manage and meshes and integrates better.

11

What’s the brand and model number?

12

This article at PC magazine will answer your questions, I think,
Wi-Fi Range Extender vs. Mesh Network: What’s the Difference?

13

Our house has plaster walls. I have the router that came from my internet provider set up in my living room. It’s old and has limited range, but all the A/V equipment is nearby and is set up with that network. From that router, I have an ethernet cable that runs down to the basement and into a second router, which runs a second wifi network.

When I set this system up back in spring 2020 when I suddenly needed an internet connection in the basement, I just used an old wifi router I had. When that started having a lot of issues, I bought a new one, which has incredible range. Now the basement wifi network is the stronger one pretty much everywhere except in the living room. The new router has enough range that we share our wifi with our neighbor.

I don’t know if a mesh network is more trouble, or way more convenient, but our method of just adding a router to the system worked fine.

14

Meshed APs are easier from a management perspective if you are going to have multiple APs in your house since they are integrated together, so you only need to set up your SSID(s) in one place, change your passwords or do security in one place, set up your traffic shaping, etc. If you have individual non-integrated APs it’s a bit of a pain in the ass. Also, non-integrated APs often fight each other, causing them to hop channels or having your wireless devices switch (or not switch) APs while you move around. But if what you have is working for you, I’d say stick with that.

15

The term you are looking for is “Access Point”.

NOT extender.

16

Also, if you have any network printers or smart devices on your wi-fi network, a mesh network will put them all on the same network, whereas with some of the extension solutions, you can end up with effectively 2 wi-fi networks and you can’t see the smart devices or network printers if you’re on the wrong one.

17

Yes, though you can get around that if you know how to put the individual APs into transparent/bridge mode. Again, though, it’s a pain in the butt you don’t have to deal with if you use an integrated mesh system. To paraphrase from This Is The End, today you don’t need to be doing WiFi like a pilgrim…push the easy mode button! (ETA: Anyone not familiar with the actual quote or the movie, I wouldn’t look it up at work…it’s definitely NSFW territory)

18

The downside of mesh is that the wifi point not wired into the ethernet has to have a decent wireless connection. Normally, that would mean the unwired repeater being positioned halfway between you (poor Ethernet) and the wired WiFI point.

To get a signal from a wired location, as you mention, needs a wired access point. If you aren’t sure, a simple router can be an access point, but requires a bit of finagling.

A router usually has about 4 ports that are for the internal network, one for WAN (Wide Area Network, i.e. the internet) and WIFI. A router has DHCP which hands out addresses on the internal network, and also tells those devices, along with their local IP address, where to send communications to the internet - ie., send them to that router.

What you want to do is turn off DHCP: To do this -
Login to the second router, usually by plugging your PC into a local port.
Find the feature when it hands out addresses, and disable it.
Configure the WiFI, either with the same name/password as your main WIFI, or another one.
Change the address of this router so it fits into your main internal network, but does not conflict.
Reboot.
Now you can plug this router into your home ethernet, using a local port. (Be sure to leave the WAN port empty).

NETWORK 101- Too Much Info

Basically, I)P is an address like 10.0.x.x or 192.168.x.x (X is 0 to 255)
Some devices (like routers) have hard-coded addresses
Some ask for an address when they connect to a network or at boot up, using DHCP.
A device talks to any other on the local network directly.
A device talks to the outside world by sending to the “default gateway”. This is why DHCP, along with an IP address, usually sends a “default gateway”.

Most home routers automatically configure themselves to be the one with DHCP handing out addresses, and have a fixed address like 10.0.0.1 or 192.168.0.1.
The “local” ports and wifi will repeat signals back and forth inside the network so the internal devices can talk to each other.

When you disable DHCP on a second router, it does not disable the switching (repeater) function of the device. So it acts like an access point.
Connect this configured second router to the active router (local port to local port ethernet), and any DHCP request from a local port or wifi will carry on to the local port connected to the active router since the second router’s DHCP is off.
When you connect a device to the second router ehternet or wifi, the active router will give any connecting device an address, including to use the active router as the default gateway.
The second router is acting like a switch and access point.

The only gotcha is that often routers have a default address (and often this is 10.0.0.1 or 192.168.0.1) You don’t want your active router and secondary router to have the same address. Change the second router’s last number in its IP so it does not conflict with the main active router or other devices. Perhaps, pick a random number between 150 and 250

Or ask our local nerd to do this for you.

19

I should be able to get a look at it tomorrow. thanks.

20

Very informative- not too much information. I appreciate it. I might even have a fairly recent router kicking around.