Most users having a wireless router at
home or office usually complain of dead zones and low wireless
connectivity in certain areas. This usually happens when you have a
large room or multiple rooms, where a single wireless router cannot
serve the entire area effectively. Upgrading to Wi-Fi ‘n’ routers or
installing high-gain antennas could solve the problem, but the chances
are remote when it comes to accessing the signals in a larger area or if
you have many walls in between you and your router, especially. Adding
Wi-fi signal repeaters can help, but this increases the overall cost of
the hardware.
A simpler and slightly cheaper solution would be installing
additional wireless routers in other rooms, which will solve the
problem. In this workshop, we show you how to configure multiple routers
on the same network. Using this trick, you can have one single SSID
throughout the entire network and stay in the same subnet too. Before
you proceed, make sure you have an extra router handy with you. Any
basic router would do since the goal is to spread the Wi-Fi network to a
specific part of the house and not the whole house. You can invest in a
few cheap Wi-Fi ‘g’ or ‘n’ routers, depending on how big your house is.
Let’s begin with an example to make you understand the network a bit
better. You have a large home, which spreads across two or more rooms or
floors. You have one wireless router, which is connected to the
Internet gateway (either a DSL modem or a direct connection through your
cable guy) and is placed in your living room. You can access this
wireless network in your living room with ease, but your bedroom,
kitchen, terrace or garden area has a very weak signal or you are unable
to even get the network there. All you need is an additional router or
more routers, which will pick up the primary network from another room
and extend it further into its area. We shall take an example of a
scenario where three routers are required to cover the area in the
living room, the bedroom and the garden. Let’s call the primary wireless
router in the living room as LR1, BR1 for the wireless router in the
bedroom and GR1 for the one in the garden. Now we assume that LR1 is
configured by default with SSID ‘RAHUL’ and a secure WPA2 password.
Let’s assume IP address is 192.168.0.1 and the DHCP server is
enabled. All clients now connecting to this router will be given IP
addresses by this DHCP server on LR1 from 192.168.0.2, 192.168.0.3, and
so on. Log in to your router using that IP in a browser and open the
settings page. Here, set the wireless network channel to ‘Channel 1’.
Now, dig around a bit till you find the option to increase the antenna
gain, and set it to the highest possible strength. Save and restart the
router. LR1 is now configured.
Now let’s configure the second router BR1, which is placed in the
bedroom. Once again, connect the router to a PC via the Ethernet or
Wi-Fi network for configuration. Open the setup page of the router and
start the setup wizard. Configure the WAN IP (Internet gateway) settings
as ‘Dynamic’. This will receive an IP address from the primary router
automatically. Next move on to configure the wireless network details,
such as SSID and security password. Now enter the SSID the same as the
primary router LR1 (in this case ‘RAHUL’). Enter the security type (in
this case WPA2) and password, which is again identical to LR1. Next, set
the channel number as channel 6, so that there is no overlapping of the
channels between LR1 and BR1. Increase the antennal signal strength to
maximum. Next, move on to the LAN settings and disable the DHCP server.
Save the settings and the router will restart. Now BR1 is also
configured