Wireless Routers as Repeaters

[akinghcb]

I live next door to my parents and I am just getting high speed internet. I want them to have access to it as well, so I am purchasing two routers (Belkin F5D9230-4). What do I need to do in order to make the second router work as a repeater in order to give them signal strength at their house?

I plan on putting one in my house and one either in a pavilion between our houses or in their house.

Please help!

[andyman]

In my experience repeater systems don't work very well unless you get some top of the line gear (cisco airnet series is good), but you will need to setup your router as a root bridge with clients, and setup your parrents as a non-root bridge. Good luck

[GroundZero3]

You will want to check to see if they support bridging mode

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

Some routers will allow you to use a "WDS" function. I've found a manual for your device/s and I was unable to spot anything in it that mentioned it...
http://belkin.httpsvc.vitalstreamcdn.../f5d9230-4.pdf

As I was only scanning through, there's a chance that I've missed it...

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

You will want to check to see if they support bridging mode

That's another option - but again, I couldn't see any mention of that in the PDF....

[jananivivek]

hey buddy! you cant really make the f5d9230-4 as a repeater. all you can do is you can buy f5d7132 (a repeater) and you can bridge it with the 9230-4

[herbstech]

There is a much simpler way. If the houses are fairly close (within a few hundred feet), you can just use a window antenna on your end and/or on their end. You would only need 1 wireless router on your end (with external antenna port) and your parents should have a wireless card (or equivalent) also with an external antenna jack. Window antennas are very convenient since they use suction cups and dont require any drilling.

Ideally you would want both window antennas such that they are pointing right at each other or close to it. You should have LOS (Line of Sight) ideally for this setup to work at full speed.

Note that many Wifi repeaters are not a great solution because they slow down the performance since they have to receive packets, then retransmit them in an alternating fashion. By having a strong direct wireless link, your parents should get very good performance.

If the windows are such that they are on the wrong sides of the houses (for example, your window where your computer is is facing a different neighbor), then let me know because then you would likely need 1 or 2 more components to make it work well.

There is also the option of digging a trench and wiring them up with ethernet cable.

But to answer your original question, I am not familiar with those wireless products so I can only offer alternatives.

I use a "homemade" repeater which is actually 2 identical devices wired (cabled) together operating in 2 different modes and that works great. The advantage of my type of repeater is I can point one antenna one way and the other antenna another way. Many single device Wifi repeaters just have a "stub" antenna which is almost omnidirectional. That is kind of a waste because sometimes the directions you want to repeat are well known and fixed map directions (such as in you and your parents case). Ideally you would want the repeater to direct the signal AWAY from the area that already has good coverage but many Wifi repeaters I have seen DONT do that so that is why I "concocted" my own which works very well.

If the windows are oriented so they roughly point to each other with no major obstructions between them, then you may only need one window suction cup antenna (or none if you are really close). Try the minimal setup first that may work and tweak it from there.

Without doing a site survey I cannot really tell for sure but it sounds to me like this is a VERY easy thing to get working.