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Setting up a second vodafone router as an access point

paulvg
3: Seeker
3: Seeker

I have had major problems with my broadband speeds.

But also my wifi speeds.

 

So i bought another Vodafone router, hoping to put it into access point mode. Connected to the main router with an ethernet cable.

 

(BOTH ROUTERS ARE VODAFONE)

 

Router 1: 

Has the WAN cable plugged in. (connected to internet)

set ip: 192.168.1.1

DCHP: 192.168.1.10 - 192.168.1.99

 

Router 2:

set ip: 192.168.1.2

DCHP: 192.168.1.100 - 192.168.1.120

I've set DCHP off, and on. 

 

 

I can ping Router 1 from Router 2 using the routers web status test page.

And they both show on the NAT table / connected list to each other.

 

Sometimes i see a page, showing me to connect the WAN cable to router 2.. Surely it should recognise it comes from Router 1. Or did i miss a setting?

One thing i considered was setting a gateway? but there is no option for this.

 

I am technically able, but not familiar with setting up access points before.

 

Thanks for any help.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Anonymous
Not applicable

Okay, it should work.

 

You need to connect the second router to the first using an ethernet cable from a LAN port on router 1 to a LAN port on router 2.  Think of Router 1 as being in charge of the network, and so turn off the DHCP on router 2, let router one do al the work.  Once you've done that the remaining LAN ports on the second router will just act like a network hub, and you can set up the WiFi!

 

Now you may have seen me ranting against "splitting the SSIDs" as being used by tech support as the answer to life the universe and everything.  The reason being that while the supplied router is an unmittigated disaster, it's actually not bad at automatically assigning clients to best WiFi band!  However, your access point is not going to automatically be handing over clients on the fly!  So pick a variant SSID for the Access Point (but no need to split the SSIDs by band on the Access Point IMHO).  If the devices you are using are stationary they may just log on to the strongest signal anyhow (so you could in that scenario just use a single SSID for everything).  Once it's all set up you can even do a bit of load balancing either using the per router SSIDs or if you go for just a single SSID by using MAC filtering.  If it's feasible you may even want to consider having one router set up for just "N" WiFi and the other as "B/G/N" on the 2.4GHz and one as "AC" and the other as "A/N" on the 5GHz.

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11 REPLIES 11

Jayach
16: Advanced member
16: Advanced member

@azimmeghji wrote:

hello - if you follow this can you name the ssid on the second router the same as the first and your laptop only needs to connect to this one SSID?


I would definitely suggest you do not this.

Anonymous
Not applicable

A little more clarification:

 

Turning off the DHCP on Router 2 is a must, it's not optional, or it will try to route your internet traffic though it's own (unconnected) VDSL modem - hence why router 2 is asking you to conect the WAN cable!  With only DHCP enabled on Router 1, that router will allocate local IPs, set the default DNS addresses, the default gateway, the NTP address, and a few things more.  DHCP does not act as "Name Server" itself, though it does supply default pointers to "name servers".  *That DHCP acts as a name server is a common misconception (I've even seen techs on here talking as though it does - rant no.2 over).

 

The above is common to most consumer modem/routers not just the Vodafone one, it's not really untill you get upto business class devices that you get the ability to have one device managing the network and have it direct external traffic to a seperate gateway device (or devices) on the network.