Wifi Extender - TP-link TL-WA860RE

Equaliser123

Hi.

Wonder if anyone could help.

I've just bought the above wifi extender to try and eliminate 'not-spots' in our house. It works well. Both the router and the extender use the same SSID (name).

However, the problem seems to be that devices in the room where the internet router is fails to connect. In other words, there are no connectivity issues when using the extender itself (i.e. when further away from the router) but when close to the router wifi connection is made but there is no internet access.

It can be rectified if the device is reset albeit not every time. This seems particularly bad with iphones and ipads albeit perhaps because these are moved around more.

Has anyone else had this problem? Would be very grateful for any possible ways of resolving.

Thanks!

googler

If the original router is any of the recent BT Homehubs, or any other router which implements channel-hopping on the fly, then you may get some traction by going into the router control panel and setting it to stick to one channel.

If the router starts out in the morning on Channel 11, say, then later in the day decides to switch to Channel 2, or 4.....

You can get channel-sniffing software to run on any WiFi PC in the house, to see which is the quietest channel. Then use that.

Equaliser123

googler wrote: »

If the original router is any of the recent BT Homehubs, or any other router which implements channel-hopping on the fly, then you may get some traction by going into the router control panel and setting it to stick to one channel.

If the router starts out in the morning on Channel 11, say, then later in the day decides to switch to Channel 2, or 4.....

You can get channel-sniffing software to run on any WiFi PC in the house, to see which is the quietest channel. Then use that.

Hi. Thanks for that. It isn't a BT router but a Talktalk DLink.

Any other thoughts?

Equaliser123

Just tried a wifi sniffer. Here's the result (extender first)

TALKTALK-B87D67 F4:F2:6D:C3:2E:79 -62 1+5 b, g, n 300 Mbps PSK-(TKIP|CCMP) PSK-(TKIP|CCMP) 1.0 TP-LINK TECHNOLOGIES CO.LTD. 14:04:16 now Infrastructure

and

TALKTALK-B87D67 6C:19:8F:B8:7D:67 -83 1 b, g, n 135 Mbps PSK-(TKIP|CCMP) PSK-(TKIP|CCMP) 1.0 D-Link International 14:04:16 00:00:05 ago Infrastructure

stator

So they are both using channel 1? Might be worth trying to change the d-link router to use a different channel like 8 or something?

Equaliser123

stator wrote: »

So they are both using channel 1? Might be worth trying to change the d-link router to use a different channel like 8 or something?

Good plan but still not working.

If I switch the extender off, devices connect straight away. Definitely some sort of conflict somewhere.

spud17

What about setting different ssid's?

Equaliser123

spud17 wrote: »

What about setting different ssid's?

Yes, the problem with that is that I wanted to keep it pretty seamless so that devices would connect to just one access point.

stator

The fact that the devices can receive signals from both wifi points at the same time might be causing the problem

GunJack

Equaliser123 wrote: »

Yes, the problem with that is that I wanted to keep it pretty seamless so that devices would connect to just one access point.

I find that in general (cr)apple devices have pretty poor wifi chips/capabilities (which is really poo considering the premium paid for them, but that's another thread).....

...may well be best having different SSIDs for each, most devices will happily save several SSIDs and passwords and switch between them (but again, apple's wifi chips & sw aren't the best...)