Wifi Problems or router problems?

[bjballar41]

well mine doesnt have that option looks like

 

[bjballar41]

So what's everyone thing ditch the extender and get a better router?

 

[johnb35]

Is it a 1 level apartment? I just got this router for a friend of mine last month.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/444743/RT-AC53U_Dual-Band_Wireless_AC1200_Router

He has a 2 story house where the modem and router is upstairs in a bedroom and the laptop was downstairs on the other side of the house with a full signal.

However, there have been many firmware updates for your current router. What firmware version is currently installed?

 

[bjballar41]

mine is up to date the only thing newer is a beta version. my biggest problem now is that an iphone on the other end of the apartment wont stay connected to our network

 

[johnb35]

On the Iphone, check signal strength to see if it just has low signal or if the signal is just dropping from the extender. My guess is that its the extender. You could get a router that has ddwrt and set it up as a repeater.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320091&ignorebbr=1

 

[beers]

You could get a router that has ddwrt and set it up as a repeater.

Yuck, then he would have another extender

 

[bjballar41]

this is one reason i told her not to get an iphone lol. everything was fine when she had an android

 

[johnb35]

Yuck, then he would have another extender

But a better one at that. lol. The extenders themselves always seem to have issues. But when you use a router as one then it seems to work like it should.

But if he could actually run a cable from one router to another one, would be a better solution.

 

[bjballar41]

it would have to be a very very long cable lol were talking from one end to the other end.

 

[bjballar41]

i could get the new router and use the old one as an access point it does have that option?

 

[johnb35]

According to my n56u, Access point mode can only be done through connecting an ethernet cable. You most likely need to use a router with ddwrt as the access point.

 

[bjballar41]

o gotcha just saw it as a spec

 

[beers]

i could get the new router and use the old one as an access point it does have that option?

You could set it up this way, yes. Pretty much every consumer router would support that function but there are a few steps to making it work (assign LAN IP address on AP-Router within same subnet, connect to network with LAN ports, set up same SSID/security and different wifi channel).

Some routers have a 'special AP' function that makes it a bit easier, but there's no reason you can't just use 2/3rds the functions of any generic router by just avoiding the WAN interface.