Wireless network question (router feeding router)

Oboro

So, I live in a really big house. The cable-in is in a bedroom on one end of one wing, and the tenant bedrooms are all on the opposite wing. We got fed up of having to use the common areas if we wanted the wireless signal, so we bought a second router, set it up, and were doing fine for a while. Problem is, though, that the SSID keeps ... falling off. o_O

We have the cable-in which feeds a router (R1). One of the ethernet switches from R1 then feeds a piece of CAT5 to a second router (R2), in the other wing, as its own "Internet-in" wire. The firmware picks it up, automatically passes along the relevant settings, and everything is great for a while.

Then, consistently but spontaneously, it ... falls off. We stop getting signal in our wing, and R2 begins broadcasting a phantom SSID ("Wireless network") that's impossible to connect to and distinct from the SSID R1 broadcasts ("Westhold").

The fix right now is to unplug R2, reset it, and then plug it in again so that the firmware will take care of everything, albeit temporarily.

Is there some manual configuring of R2/R1 that'll stop this behavior and make it function more consistently? They're both middle-shelf Netgear models, 54mb strength with four wired ports in addition to the WAN feed.

Infidel

They're the same SSID or different? Is the feed from the main router plugged into the WAN port of the second, or into one of the switch ports?

Oboro

It's plugged into the WAN port. When it's working well, we only see the one SSID. When it stops working, we see the regular SSID (but can't connect to it from the one side of the house), and we see additionally the phantom SSID ("Wireless network") that's impossible to do anything to or with.

Infidel

Try setting it to two separate SSIDs. They may be conflicting.

And I assume you only want one physical network, so turn off DHCP on the second router and connect port 4 on one to port 4 on the other. Then you'll have a proper network.

You could do a mesh, all-one-SSID network, with something like a Linksys router and Tomato firmware. Not sure if your specific model Netgear is compatible with something like that, but if not it just means you have to have two SSIDs to keep it from flaking out.

Oboro

Man, I have no idea why I didn't just make it two SSIDs to begin with. For whatever reason, I thought they would have to be the same for the signal to propagate. You're clever. Thanks.

Ruckus

Check your wireless channels too. Use channels at least 2-3 apart (eg 11 and 8, or 1 and 4). This (supposedly) prevents frequency overlap at the the signal drop-off range.

vonPoonBurGer

The "channels" are actually spans of wireless spectrum, and each channel overlaps with the two above and the two below it. So channel 6 actually shares some spectrum with channels 4, 5, 7 and 8. Channel 1 and channel 11 should be your starter choices, they use spectrum at the top and bottom of the range that cannot be overlapped, and they avoid any overlap with channel 6, which all manufacturers use as the default.

Infidel

What's great with Tomato firmware (I'm sure there are other ways, but it's what I usually end up using, and Linksys 45G routers) is that you can set the routers to Accesspoint + WDS, the WDS basically meaning you can make a mesh network with two or more routers with just the one SSID. Nice if people are moving around a large area and automatically switching from router to router.

But two SSIDs will work.

Oboro

Yeahhh, those 45Gs are impossible to find in brick&mortar shops as far as we could find, and when we did, they were ridiculously-expensive and were the new models where they shrunk the memory so much that you can't do most of the firmware modding anyhow. :P

We have it working better now, there was also an issue where uh, we had it on the wrong side of a fireplace. Chimneys are apparently exceedingly dense. <.<

AngelHedgie

Oboro wrote: »

Yeahhh, those 45Gs are impossible to find in brick&mortar shops as far as we could find, and when we did, they were ridiculously-expensive and were the new models where they shrunk the memory so much that you can't do most of the firmware modding anyhow. :P

We have it working better now, there was also an issue where uh, we had it on the wrong side of a fireplace. Chimneys are apparently exceedingly dense. <.<

Not so much that they're dense as there's metal lining in them.

Anyways, as people have pointed out, best thing is to not use the second one as a router and set the WAP to a different SSID.