Wifi access point

Mur Huwcun · Feb 12, 2018

Right then...

Wifi won’t cover the whole house here due to too many solid stone walls!

Have a cat 5 or two access point in each room, all running back to where BT socket and main hub is. Therefore tried using another hub as a repeater, tried a BT home hub, got it working but for some reason it now will loose the wifi after roughly 5 mins but re connect after about two minutes then repeat constantly. Next day, devices wont connect stating incorrect password, switch the home hub off and on and will be ok for the evening barr the 5 minutes interuptions. Not ideal.

EE sent us another hub as we thankfully were able to upgrade to fibre in the cabinet. So have tried the old brightbox as the repeater, this will work for about 3 minutes then loose the internet connection permanently intill reset. I’ve done the disable DHCP thing, changed the setting to ethernet etc. Now after sone readup I changed the IP address of the second hub (changed from .1 to .2) to a different one to the first and moved the pool up one digit etc. It still wont work and now I cant log back into the admin of the hub with the .1 or .2.

Anyone tried something like this and can give me an idea of where I’m being thick or overlooking something?

Pheasant Surprise · Feb 12, 2018

Sounds like you may inadvertently be running two DHCP servers (the bits of software on the router/hub that hand out IP addresses to your laptops, tablets etc).

Either that or the manner in which you have connected your primary router to your secondary hub, you have ‘nested’ them using the WAN port connections - which is causing a situation known as double NAT’ing - this basically fecks a lot of stuff up.

Best to first check your physical cabling is going to the correct ports on the devices - and then also check you have disabled DHCP serving on any downstream connected hubs/routers.

Hope that all makes sense. Sorry for the jargon.

HDAV · Feb 12, 2018

Never had much success running domestic AIO routers as AP’s

Buy a £30 AP put it outside dhcp range and configure it and go.
Tplink are decent (get the pro range) or netgear dlink etc

https://www.ebuyer.com/351536-d-link-dap-1360-wireless-n-access-point-dap-1360-b

Mur Huwcun · Feb 12, 2018

Pheasant Surprise said:
Sounds like you may inadvertently be running two DHCP servers (the bits of software on the router/hub that hand out IP addresses to your laptops, tablets etc).

Either that or the manner in which you have connected your primary router to your secondary hub, you have ‘nested’ them using the WAN port connections - which is causing a situation known as double NAT’ing - this basically fecks a lot of stuff up.

Best to first check your physical cabling is going to the correct ports on the devices - and then also check you have disabled DHCP serving on any downstream connected hubs/routers.

Hope that all makes sense. Sorry for the jargon.

DHCP is disabled on both the second routers. Not using the WAN ports but just the usual yellow to yellow with cat 5e cables. The cat 5 network is ok as I can get a wired connection to laptops etc. It’s frustrating now as it should work but I’m missing something or overcomplicating it!!!

Mur Huwcun · Feb 12, 2018

HDAV said:
Never had much success running domestic AIO routers as AP’s

Buy a £30 AP put it outside dhcp range and configure it and go.
Tplink are decent (get the pro range) or netgear dlink etc

https://www.ebuyer.com/351536-d-link-dap-1360-wireless-n-access-point-dap-1360-b

That will be the next stage, my brother has a few that I can try. He’s an IT consultant but I’m hopeless at fixing his car and he does not take much interest in my IT problems!!!!

Pheasant Surprise · Feb 12, 2018

Hmm. Ok if the wired network is working correctly then it should be a wireless setting issue. Are both boxes running the same wireless config - 2.4 or 5 GHz, network name, WiFi access password, channel settings (often good to keep channel separation of 3 or more between acess points, if manual channel setting available on APs)

HDAV · Feb 12, 2018

Give each a separate SSID and password also look for alternative firmware versions (don’t get these from Untrusted sites)but many uk ISP run branded firmware the oem firmware is often better and more flexible but requires manual config of ADSL info (not relevant here)

Clive · Feb 12, 2018

Mur Huwcun said:
Right then...

Wifi won’t cover the whole house here due to too many solid stone walls!

Have a cat 5 or two access point in each room, all running back to where BT socket and main hub is. Therefore tried using another hub as a repeater, tried a BT home hub, got it working but for some reason it now will loose the wifi after roughly 5 mins but re connect after about two minutes then repeat constantly. Next day, devices wont connect stating incorrect password, switch the home hub off and on and will be ok for the evening barr the 5 minutes interuptions. Not ideal.

EE sent us another hub as we thankfully were able to upgrade to fibre in the cabinet. So have tried the old brightbox as the repeater, this will work for about 3 minutes then loose the internet connection permanently intill reset. I’ve done the disable DHCP thing, changed the setting to ethernet etc. Now after sone readup I changed the IP address of the second hub (changed from .1 to .2) to a different one to the first and moved the pool up one digit etc. It still wont work and now I cant log back into the admin of the hub with the .1 or .2.

Anyone tried something like this and can give me an idea of where I’m being thick or overlooking something?

Get rid of the BT hub and get a Draytek etc. Had similar (but not identical) issues re handover in my house with several access points and the problems were all solved when we swaped out the BT home hub

Turra farmer · Feb 13, 2018

Use plug in boosters that run through the electric wiring , they are plug and play

Ukjay · Feb 13, 2018

Have you tried the following:

Press the factory reset in the back of the slave hub,

Set up the same SSID,

Set same Encryption Settings and password into the slave as the master,

Set a Static IP address to the slave router outside of the master DHCP range of the master Router (for example - if your router issues IP addresses from say (end numbers here only) 1 through to 259, set the slave up as 260 to remove conflicting data.

Set the WIFI channel outside of the channel that the Master Router is transmitting on - for example, it the master is on channel 5, set the slave up on 10 and turn of random settings.

Pheasant Surprise · Feb 13, 2018

All good stuff @Ukjay except the IP example as written wont work; you can only set IP addresses in the range up to 254. The 255 is a reserved gateway address, and you can’t set any higher numbered in a subnet.

If you reduce the pool to say up to .200 then there’s still plenty of IP adressss available for setting fixed outside of the pool up to and including .254 in the subnet range.

Mur Huwcun · Feb 13, 2018

The main router upstairs is running both 2.4 and 5 Ghz. As of yet I’ve not set them both to sam name and password etc as the roaming bit is not the issue with the two EE boxes, it’s the dropping of the internet connection not the wifi connection with that box. The BT one is the opposite!! I only need one slave therfore have been trying both! The BT ones have a terrible reputation on the net anyhow therefore I’m persevering with the EE one for now!! I changed the IP to a .2 and moved the pool settings up one digit, maybe the issue lies here somehow?

Great stuff, thank you all

rollestonpark · Feb 13, 2018

last 2 posts will sort you out.
As said you need to get into the settings of the new Access Point for setting up, I've often used engenius access points due to the high reliability.
I would just say that you need just 1 DHCP server on your network, on a simple network setup this would likely be your ADSL router.
The new access point should really have a fixed IP address outside of the range of the ADSL routers DHCPing range.
Set the same SSID and pass as the ADSL, but different channel preferable a few channels away from the router.
In the new Access Point you need to set the IP, subnet and default gateway of your network, so it can route back to the ADSL router and out.
So the default gateway IP is the ADSL router's IP,

so for example:
ADSL/VDSL or whatever router is:
IP address: 192.168.1.1
subnet: 255.255.255.0
It is the default gateway, so this normally 192.168.1.1 or you tell it to be the default gateway, depends how the manufacture has done this.
If the router's DHCP range is set to 192.168.1.100 - 192.168.1.200 for example

Then WIFI Access Point:
set IP to maybe: 192.168.1.2
subnet 255.255.255.0
default gateway: 192.168.1.1

Hope this clears a few things up. This is just an example, your IPs maybe different

Pheasant Surprise · Feb 13, 2018

It won’t help the OP, as he’s trying to repurpose existing kit, but in general I’ve found maximum WiFi reliability / interoperability etc etc is when you use identical access point devices from the same manufacturer. They generally play more nicely together and having the same hardware/software on the WiFi side of things makes roaming between the AP more reliable.

There are sometimes tiny mostly innocuous differences between how different manufacturers implement their WiFi chipsets etc. Often not a problem until you have multiple such devices acting as “access points” in the one install with devices having access to both with same SSID/security settings.

Now that may or may be happening here, or it could just be a simple setting.

Very important on the “slave” device to switch off all its ‘router’ functionality if that makes sense. You don’t want it doing any DHCP dealing, firewalling or content filtering - that’s the job of the main router and will only cause strife if there are two devices contending to do the same thing.

milkloss · Feb 13, 2018

A waste of time using old and repurposed kit. Tplink, netgear et al are all basically crap for what you are trying to do. It might work but will likely be unreliable and handing over will be a cluster feck hassle.

Either buy draytek stuff which does what it says on the tin or go for a mesh type system in the house: all one WiFi network with their own type of handover as you roam. £600 for a good setup mind.

Grassman247 · Feb 13, 2018

All the suggestions here are okay but at the end of the day most equipment mention here is rubbish apart from the draytek kit which for what you are doing I feel is overkill. I too have a large farmhouse, I switched to a netgear gaming router as they seem to have a very stable internet connection and then ran a cat5 cable up the outside wall into the attic and fitted one of these
http://www.4gon.co.uk/ubiquiti-unif...xleTDB8z40hRFJM9Dwok2QCBGPh0OF4xoCk6gQAvD_BwE

The whole house now has wifi, no configuring needed nice and easy and if needs be you can fit another and create a mesh WiFi

Let the router concentrate on routing internet and the ubiquity on handling the WiFi

Mur Huwcun · Feb 13, 2018

We’re getting somewhere. Fiddling with the Ip address pool got the second hub to work as a switch, i.e the laptop with an ethernet cable from the hub was getting an internet connection. A bit more fiddling with the wifi channel, changed it to 11 and we have, upto now, uninterrupted wifi and can go to the far end bedroom and only loose wifi for split second as it changes over. I have not changed the SSID and passwords to match, will try that tommorow night!!! Thanks for all the help. Will have to remind my brother that it took a bunch of farmers to sort it out

Ukjay · Feb 13, 2018

Pheasant Surprise said:
All good stuff @Ukjay except the IP example as written wont work; you can only set IP addresses in the range up to 254. The 255 is a reserved gateway address, and you can’t set any higher numbered in a subnet.

If you reduce the pool to say up to .200 then there’s still plenty of IP adressss available for setting fixed outside of the pool up to and including .254 in the subnet range.

Thanks Pheasant Surprise - I have never gone as high in setting IP addresses simply reduced the range and opted for one outside this new pool, so I was hypothesising on the max IP address one could use to try and explain the scenario, so even I have learnt something new here about max options, which is always useful for me as most of what I do is self taught

ollie989898 · Feb 13, 2018

Grassman247 said:
All the suggestions here are okay but at the end of the day most equipment mention here is rubbish apart from the draytek kit which for what you are doing I feel is overkill. I too have a large farmhouse, I switched to a netgear gaming router as they seem to have a very stable internet connection and then ran a cat5 cable up the outside wall into the attic and fitted one of these
http://www.4gon.co.uk/ubiquiti-unif...xleTDB8z40hRFJM9Dwok2QCBGPh0OF4xoCk6gQAvD_BwE

The whole house now has wifi, no configuring needed nice and easy and if needs be you can fit another and create a mesh WiFi

Let the router concentrate on routing internet and the ubiquity on handling the WiFi

Simplest solution in my book, and will give better wifi signal all over the property. Exactly the same is done in large buildings and hotels etc.

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