I got a new 802.11g wireless router the other day. After setting it up, I was looking at the 802.11b router it had replaced and my mind started that most dangerous of activities....
I got it in my head to try to extend the range of our wireless network to cover the commons room at our apartment complex, so I could chill out in there while reading the Web and streaming music.
Two minutes of googling didn't provide much direction (most of what's out there seems to be about wireless access points specifically designed for things like repeating and roaming), with the exception of a page that mentioned trying to alternate access points channels amoung 1, 6 and 11 so that common channel overlap is minimised.
In hopes that my experiment will benefit someone else —mostly, as encouragement to try as it will actually work with consumer routers not intended for the purpose— here are the most interesting bits of what I did. As is typical in apartment complexes, all my neighbours use the default channel 6. So I set the 802.11g router to channel 1 and the other to channel 11. The 802.11g router goes in my room where it can switch data amoung my laptop and desktops at the fastest rate, and the 802.11b router went in the middle of the large windows of my roommates' room where it had the least obstructed view towards the commons.
I tried setting each to distinct SSIDs so I could set the 802.11g network as preferred. Strangely, that seemed to backfire: my 802.11g laptop stuck on the 802.11b signal fairly tenaciously even though it was lower on the preference list and even when I was ten times closer to the 802.11g base station than the 802.11b. Go figure. So, instead I configured both to use the same SSID, although still on maximally spaced channels. This worked! The laptop seems to slide between one and the other without complaint, and more importantly stayed on the 54Mbps channel when it was in range. Wahoo.
It goes without saying that only one base station should be left in router mode, and the others should be placed in bridging mode. Also, the base stations are on our wired LAN. The uplink port of the 802.11b switch is on a normal port of the nearest hub.
HTH.
Update: http://christian.typepad.com/notebook/2006/11/update_to_multi.html
Recent Comments