Newbie question on using a Linksys wireless router as a signal booster

kbutterly 18 years ago

Good morning all,

I have a wireless router in my home, installed by Verizon. Let's call the name of the network ABC12. I have hardwired one of the ports on the Verizon wireless router to one of the CAT-5 outlets in my kids' playroom. Can I use my old Linksys wireless router, plugged into the CAT-5 outlet, as a signal booster? If I can, can anyone point me to directions? I must not be googling correctly, because I can't find anything on this online.

FWIF, when I try to do this, I can see two wireless networks, ABC12 and DEF45, which was the name of the network I used when I was using the Linksys router. If I connect to DEF45, I can't see the internet. So somehow I need to get the Linksys router to use the ABC12 network?

Thanks for any links, war stories, or references, Kathryn

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John Navas 18 years ago

On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 06:07:37 -0800 (PST), kbutterly wrote in :

No, but you can use it as a wireless access point.

See How To below on configuring a wireless router as a wireless access point.

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seaweedsteve 18 years ago

I just got this sorted out again myself. The most important thing is to plug the cable into a LAN (not wan) port.

Go into the Web browser based interface (see linksys help online) and change the channel to something different than your Verizon wireless, like 1 if your verizon is 6.

Give it the exact same SSID and security type/password if you want to roam between the Verizon and Linksys.

Be sure to secure the interface with an admistrator password too.

Steve

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John Navas 18 years ago

On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:55:34 -0800 (PST), seaweedsteve wrote in :

You probably won't be able to "roam" terribly well, but you should be able to connect to the strongest signal automatically. When roaming, your wireless client may stubbornly try to hang on to the fading signal, and even if it switches access points, you may lose your current connections.

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