linksys setup

Increasing Range

Here are some ideas to improve the range of your 802.11 wifi home network:

  1. Use a very long ethernet cable to connect your wireless access point (WAP) to your cable/dsl modem, moving the WAP as far from your modem and as close to your desired reception area as possible. (There is no need to have your WAP in your home office with the modem, since all PCs in that office can and should be connected to your router by wire.)
  2. Try placing your WAP high on the wall, or even on the ceiling. Or try a mounting kit.
  3. Experiment with the WAP antenna orientation.
  4. Buy a wireless booster (B) or antenna.
  5. If you are getting interference from wireless phones on the same frequency, try setting up different channels via the web browser interface to your WAP.
  6. If you can not get a long enough ethernet cable to place your WAP near your desired range, (hire an electrician to) run cat5 ethernet cable from your office to one or more rooms where you need wireless access, and place the WAP there.

Dual Access Points

If you have a really big area to cover, you can also use multiple access points to increase range. I just setup two Linksys BEFW11S4 v2 wireless routers for my home network:

Linksys BEFW11S4

  • Office1: cable modem, router1, PC1
  • Office2: router2, PC2
  • Floating: laptop(s).

linksys

Primary Router Setup

  1. CONNECT cablemodem to router1-wanport.
  2. CONNECT router1-port1 to pc1.
  3. Do not yet connect router1 to router2.
  4. Router1: hold reset button for 30 seconds to reset to factory defaults (will wipe out custom login, SSID, mac cloning, etc).
  5. On pc1, Start->Run, enter "cmd" to open DOS window, type "ipconfig /all" and write down the physical MAC address for pc1.
  6. Using pc1 login to router1 via http://192.168.1.1 (blank/"admin").
  7. Advanced, Mac Address Clone: enter the MAC address you had previously written down, then click on Apply.

Secondary Router Setup

  1. Login from pc2 via http://192.168.1.1 using custom password or default blank/"admin".
  2. Disable DHCP and fix router2 LAN IP address to 192.168.1.2 (to make distinct from router1 as 192.168.1.1.)
  3. Advanced, dynamic routing, change router2 from Gateway to Router.
  4. CONNECT router1-uplink (aka port4) to router2-port1.
  5. CONNECT router2-port2 to pc2.
  6. SSIDs are visible to anyone browsing; set to pme-office1 (for example) and pme-office2. Leave routers on channel 6.

I got an email from Alan Pao who used the above setup for his house, except he (a) made both SSIDs the same and (b) setup the WAPs to use different wireless channels, so that he could more easily have laptops automatically switch between the WAPs.

I also learned the official power sequence from Linksys:

Power Down

  1. Shutdown both PCs, wait one minute.
  2. Secondary router off, wait one minute.
  3. Primary router off, wait one minute.
  4. Cable modem off, wait three minutes.

Power Up

  1. Cable modem on, wait one minute.
  2. Primary router on, wait one minute.
  3. Secondary router on, wait one minute.
  4. Both PCs on.

See also my Amazon Linksys List.

paulenglish.com - articles - startups - nonprofits - press 31-Dec-2005