Question Simple (I hope) solution...

Bobtuck

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Hi all, firstly thanks for your patience in what, I presume, will be a very easy to solve problem (but beyond me!)

I have 30MBps internet provided by a company who supplied an Ubiquiti AirCube AC router.

I HAVE NO ADMIN ACCESS TO THIS ROUTER (I guess to protect the connection rate it is set to)

Wi-Fi enabled devices downstairs work fine (Alexa dot, Firestick, Kindle etc) and I have a cat5 wired connection, directly from this router, to my PC upstairs.

All is good except the Wi-Fi signal upstairs is non existent (very old house with very thick walls!).

My question is......is there something (preferably cheap!) that I can connect to my upstairs PC that will 're-transmit' the wired connection it receives and convert this into a wireless signal that other devices upstairs can utilise?

The router has no WPS button so I'm assuming that this will cause problems with homeplugs etc. and I have no access to the router has mentioned.

Many, many thanks for any help or advice

Regards, Bob
 
You shouldn't require WPS. If you're going for a simple wifi extender (no PoE), plug it in upstairs and disconnect from your wifi. Log into the interface of the extender and configure it to connect to your existing wifi. Once done, that should then be acting as a repeater and you disconnect and reconnect to your wifi.

Alternatively, if your router has additional network ports (and it should), you could go for a PoE WiFi extender. As long as you have a spare plug socket next to your router (really needs to be in an individual socket), plug the PoE master unit in and connect a cable to it from a spare port on the router. Plug the WiFi plug in upstairs and away you go. It should broadcast the wifi signal and your devices upstairs connect as normal.

Edit; I'll add that the above is assuming the ports haven't been locked down by your admin.
 
The thing you need is a Wi-Fi Access Point (AP.) However, most only have a single ethernet port so your would also need an "ethernet swtich" - unplug the PC netwokk cable, plug it into a switch, then plug PC and AP into a switch.

Alternatively, you could "cripple" a SOHO "router" so that it functions as a combination ethernet switch and AP - then again unplug your PC, plug it into your crippled router then plug the PC into said router. There's a few hoops to jump through, but it's not hard - how to do so is described in the "using Two Routers Together" FAQ pinned in this forum.

You shouldn't need to do anything to your supplied router to do this, though it might be an idea to talk to the suppliers technicians and ask them to "reserve" and IP address for you extra router/AP, but it's not strictly necessary.

Thence set up the second Wi-FI hotspot however you like (SSID name passphrase etc.) though again I think you'd be well advised to talk to your technicians as they may have reasons to be concerned about you doing this. If they've provided kit for you, they may be "worried" about you inadvertently availing a "back door" into the companies systems depending how they have things set up.
 
Okay, using an old router looks easy enough (he says!) the only bit I'm a little confused about in the FAQ is the part about choosing an IP address for the secondary router.

According to ipconfig in a command prompt I have....

IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.20.1.161
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.20.1.1

....so given the above would an IP address (for the secondary router) of 10.20.1.160 suffice?

Again, many thanks for any advice!
 
Yep. But you need to ensure the IP address is not the same as anything else on your network and does not conflict with main routers DHCP Range. You won't know what the latter is if you cannot get at your main router, so you'll need to ask your tekkies.

If not possible we can just guess and hope for the best. It's highly unlikely you have hundreds of devices in your home, so if we guess a high number, we'll probably be OK. Say 10.20.1.250. Open a CMD window on your PC, PING 10.20.1.250 and see if anything answers. If not, we're probably OK to use that address, if something does answer, then guess again.

For a Wi-FI AP, the IP address is only needed for admin purposes - in "normal use" Wi-Fi doesn't use IP (though it carries plenty of it of course.)
 
Hey mickevh thank you for taking the time to reply :)

Looking around I've realised that the old redundant router I had must have gone into the bin during my last clear out :facepalm:

Sooooo.......I've ordered this which I intend to use in AP mode....

Amazon product ASIN B076BPVR12
....my plan is to connect it via cat5 to where the PC is currently plugged in upstairs (RJ45 socket), set it to AP mode then take an ethernet cable from this new AP back to the PC in order to maintain the wired connection (PC has no wireless)

Hopefully it'll be all automatic (i.e. no setting up of IP, NAT etc etc) as I just want to extend the current wireless coverage, not create a new one.

Anyone see a problem with this?

Best regards,
 
The router you linked "only" has 100mbps ethernet. If that's OK for you then fine, but I'd have preferred one with gigabit ethernet (10/100/1000) especially if your main router is that fast.

If you are gong to "cripple" this router to use it as an AP/switch, then you don't need to worry about it's NAT and firewall as that functionality won't be doing anything. You will have to set up an IP address though, partly so you can configure/reconfigure the Wi-Fi settings and partly to ensure said IP address isn't conflicting with anything else on your network.

If it's got a "one click" setting to put it into AP mode, then it's basically doing all the work for you of knocking out the DHCP Server, router and NAT, though you'll probably still have to set up an IP address and the Wi-Fi settings.

All Wi-Fi deployments are "cellular" each AP creates it's own hotspot. The concept of "extending the signal" is meaningless as there's no such thing as "Wi-Fi Signal" as if it's some ethereal energy field like The Force, Ley Lines or Phlogistic ether.

Wi-Fi is a two way radio conversation between communicating peers like walkie-talkies, not a one way lecture like television. I talk you listen, you talk I listen. The AP just happens to be something that doesn't move and has a wire out the back so that network traffic can be forwarded to/from the wired infrastructure. It is the "Point" at which we "Access" the rest of the (wired) network - we're not very original in IT at naming things. (We leave it to Apple to invent "cool" names for stuff.)
 
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Hi mickevh, my connection is 30Mbps (rural area) so it should suffice :)

When you mention 'crippling' the router to use it as an AP do you mean in the sense of using an old, redundant router? I ask because this model has a dedicated 'AP' mode (as well as WISP and Universal Repeater mode) I don't think I need these and will simply log into it using it's default access IP in order to set it into AP (and maybe set up some security)

I'm thinking (hoping) that because this feature is 'built in' it will automatically configure itself, i.e. introduce itself to the main router downstairs and create an additional hotspot upstairs without the need to set up any other parameters.

Regards,
 
When you mention 'crippling' the router to use it as an AP do you mean in the sense of using an old, redundant router?

Yes.

I ask because this model has a dedicated 'AP' mode (as well as WISP and Universal Repeater mode) I don't think I need these and will simply log into it using it's default access IP in order to set it into AP (and maybe set up some security)

Super - AP mode will do some of the work for you - I wouldn't use it as a repeater, that uses Wi-Fi for the "backhaul" link and hits performance and since you have cabling in situ it's better run in AP Mode and backhaul over the cabling.

I'm thinking (hoping) that because this feature is 'built in' it will automatically configure itself, i.e. introduce itself to the main router downstairs and create an additional hotspot upstairs without the need to set up any other parameters.

Maybe, but it's so simple to set up Wi-Fi I wouldn't bother - all you got to do is set up the SSID Name and passphrase change the radio channels so they are not the same other router and you're done.
 

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