Extend your WiFi range using an Old Wireless Router (DD-WRT Repeater Bridge)

i'm moving this computer from room number one to room number two there's gonna be a problem a big problem so this is kind of an old computer it doesn't have a wireless adapter and it was connected to internet the simplest way possible just directly with an ethernet cable to the wireless router which happened to be in the same room as the computer basically that means if i want to have internet in room number two i will either have to run a long ethernet cable or buy a wireless adapter i don't want to do either of those instead i'm going to use the old linksys wireless router i have and set it up as a repeater bridge so what's a repeater breach it actually consists of two things first a wireless bridge a wireless bridge connects two lan segments with a wireless link in my case i will connect my pc to one of the lan interfaces of the secondary router in room number two and secondary router will connect wirelessly to the main router in room number one and form a wireless bridge this way my computer can have internet connection as for the repeater the secondary router is going to re-broadcast the current wireless network so it can cover more areas this is actually a good solution to extend the wireless network without running any cables so because the stock firmware on the linksys router doesn't give me this feature i have installed ddwrt instead which is a third-party firmware and is designed to replace the manufacturer firmware and it offers more features and in case you're wondering how you can install ddwrt i actually have another video on that subject that shows how you can do that feel free to check that out before continuing here so let's get started first of all we're not going to make any changes on the primary wireless router we're going to leave it as is whatever we do is going to be on the secondary router and i'm going to start off with doing a hard reset just to make sure there are no pre-existing configurations on the router make sure the unit is powered on but there are no wireless or wired clients connected press and hold down the reset button for 30 seconds then without releasing the reset button unplug the power and hold down the reset button for another 30 seconds plug the unit back in still holding down the reset button for a final 30 seconds next we will connect our computer with an ethernet cable to one of the lan interfaces of the secondary router so at this point the computer must have received an ip address from the router i can check that if i go to the command prompt by typing cmd in the windows search box and click on command prompt then i need to type ipconfig enter and as you can see this is my ip address and this is my default gateway which is the ip address of the router so let's have a look at the network diagram one more time at this point the primary and secondary routers are not connected to each other they happen to have the same ip address of 192.168.1.1 the pc is directly connected to one of the lan interfaces of the secondary router and has received an ip address of 192.168.1.115 from the dhcp server on the secondary router as soon as we configure the wireless bridge between the primary and secondary router there is going to be an ip conflict because they have the same ip address so before that we will have to change the secondary router's ipad just to something else i'm gonna change it to 192.168.1.2 which should work fine after we successfully configured the wireless breach the primary router is going to be the dhcp server and the secondary router is going to be in the breach mode and no longer providing any ip addresses now we can open a browser and go to 192.168.1.1 and the very first thing we need to do when we log into a fresh ddwrt router is to create a username and a password so i just go ahead and do that next thing i'm going to do is to run a continuous ping to 8.8.8.8 which is the google's public dns address if the pings are successful that means the internet is up and running if they're not like right now means there's no internet now i need to go under wireless tab and then basic settings i'll change the wireless mode from ap to repeater bridge then i'm gonna save the page i'm not gonna click on apply settings yet wireless network mode should match your current wireless network mine is 802.11n so i'm going to choose n only mix mode should also work but since i know mine is and only i'm going to go for that wireless network name or ssid should also be exactly the same as your current ssid in my case it is room one it is also case sensitive now i go under wireless security make sure everything you choose here matches your current wireless security settings in my case the security mode is wpa2 personal wpa algorithm is aes and wpa shared key is basically the password you use for your wi-fi next i go under security tab then firewall here i uncheck everything except filter multicast then i will disable the spi firewall now i go under setup and basic setup this is where i can change the ip address of the ddwrt router i'm going to change that to 192.168.1.2 subnet mask will remain the same gateway and local dns is going to be the ip address of the primary router in my case it's going to be 192.168.1.1 then i'll do a final save and then click on apply settings this will actually push the configuration to the router at this point we're done i just need to cross my fingers and wait for about one minute to see if i get successful pings or not yes and as expected we finally got the successful things that means the internet connection is up and running i can double check if i just open a website just to make sure everything is working fine okay so at this point the wireless bridge is up and running the pc has internet connection but the secondary router is not broadcasting any ssids it is only the lan interfaces that have internet connection what we're going to do next is to configure the secondary router to broadcast an ssid called room2 so this way the wireless devices connected to the router can also get internet connection and this feature is basically called a repeater or a range extender so under wireless and basic settings i'm going to add a virtual interface then i change the ssid name to room 2 and i make sure the wireless ssid broadcast is enabled so now if i go under wireless security i see the security mode for room 2 is disabled i'm going to change that to wpa2 personal and i'll use aes for the wpa algorithm i'm also using the same password as room one but the password can also be different so now if i save the page and then click on apply settings after a couple of minutes the secondary router should start broadcasting the new ssid okay so now i switch to my laptop to test the connectivity to the new ssid we just created and i also have the continuous ping to google going in the background okay as you can see room two ssid is here i just go ahead and try to connect and the pings are successful and that's a good sign i'm just going to double check the connectivity by opening a browser and going to google alright mission accomplished my desktop and my laptop in room 2 are both connected to internet hope you guys enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up if you liked it and feel free to share it and also subscribe to my youtube channel thank you very much and i see you next time

Channel: Behfor

Views: 554,718

Keywords: dd-wrt repeater bridge, dd-wrt repeater bridge setup, dd wrt repeater bridge, dd wrt repeater mode, dd wrt repeater bridge setup, dd wrt repeater linksys, dd wrt repeater, dd wrt repeater setup, dd-wrt, dd-wrt setup a client bridge and repeater bridge, dd-wrt tutorial, DD-WRT (Brand), SSID, Wireless Bridge, dd-wrt vs tomato, dd-wrt openvpn, ip address protocol, networking basics, networking fundamentals, range extender, linksys e900, behfor, extend wifi, wifi, repeater

Id: oJaYE9Yk7gc

Length: 10min 33sec (633 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/RonaldMcPaul]

How do you setup an extender?