I've got a wireless ADSL broadband router at one side of a building, but its signal is very poor at the other side of the building. Therefore I need some sort of "repeater".
Let's say that the network I'm trying to get onto is as follows: SSID: MonkeyBrain Channel: 3 Network: 10.9.8.0/24 Gateway: 10.9.8.1
So far, I've heard of two kinds of technology for "boosting" the signal.
Technology 1: You have some sort of wireless device that gets an IP address on the MonkeyBrain network. This device then broadcasts its own network with a different SSID, different channel, different network. Let's stay that the new network is: SSID: GorillaBrain Channel: 8 Network: 192.168.1.0/24 Gateway: 192.168.1.254 When you send a packet to the internet from this new GorillaBrain network, it goes to the default gateway on GorillaBrain, which forwards it on to the MonkeyBrain gateway, which forwards it to the internet.
Technology 2: I'm not sure how this works, but you can actually have a device that just boosts the signal. You've got the same SSID, same channel, same network address. You can communicate in Layer 2 protocols with the all machines on MonkeyBrain because you trully are sitting on the MonkeyBrain network. I don't see how you don't have a problem with both devices (i.e. the broadband router and the repeater device) sending duplicate signals and taking in duplicate signals.
Which technology do you think is better? Which tends to provide a faster connection? Are there any other good ways of going about boosting a signal so that it's strong on the other side of a building? (The signal I'm trying to boost is coming from an ordinary broadband router that you'd get from an ISP, nothing fancy).
I was thinking of another way of doing it. Let's say that you have a device which does the following:
Technology 3: You want to be on the MonkeyBrain network. You have a wireless device that broadcasts an SSID such as GorillaBrain. It's on a different channel to MonkeyBrain (let's say it's on channel 12), but it has the same network address (10.9.8.0/24). When GorillaBrain receives a frame on channel 12, it forwards it on to MonkeyBrain on channel 3. In this fashion, you could have MonkeyBrain using WEP, and GorillaBrain using WPA, but essentially they're the same network. (e.g. if you went into the router statistics on MonkeyBrain then you'd be able to see all the hosts that are on GorillaBrain, also all the GorillaBrain hosts would get their IP address from the DHCP server running on MonkeyBrain).
Is there any device the accomplishes what I describe in "Technology
3"?Can anyone please give advice as to what kind of "repeater" device I should get. My preference would be either Technology 3 or Technology
- I think Technology 1 would introduce unwarranted overhead and would add the complication of only being able to communicate via IP with machines on MonkeyBrain.
Can anyone suggest devices, and perhaps give me an overview of the technologies used? And don't be afraid to get technical, I've a decent knowledge of datacoms (and also of wave transmission and the like).
Thanks for listening! :)
Tom=E1s