How To Extend Your Wi-Fi Network With Simple Access Points

Last week we showed you how to extend your network without wires, this week were looking at
how you can use use an existing hardwire network to easily and quickly extend your wireless
network using simple access points.
After we published our guide How To Extend Your Wireless network with Tomato-Powered
Routers, we received a variety of reader questions regarding other tips and tricks one could use to
extend a wireless network. Bill wrote in with the following question which echoes quite a few
similar emails:
I read and followed your guide last Tuesday. Everything worked as promised, but Ive
noticed the secondary router seems a little flaky. Is there a more bare-bones way to go
about this technique than setting up the Tomato routers via WDS as you have us do in
the tutorial? My house is wired with Ethernet but, alas, very few of my devices actually
use hard wire anymore. What can I do? All my routers are running current releases of
TomatoUSB.
If Bill didnt have the existing LAN in place, wed have to tell him to try a different firmware (like
DD-WRT) that allows for true Wi-Fi repeating. Since he has an existing hardwired Ethernet LAN,
however, hes in luck.
In a situation with no Ethernet network, you have to rely completely on wireless technology to link
the access points together (as we did when we used WDS to link the two Tomato routers together
last week). When you have a hardwired network, however, things get radically easier as you can use
the Ethernet as a backbone for the network and convert the secondary routers to simple access
points that require little effort to configure and deploy.
What specifically do you gain by using this technique over the previous technique? In our prior
tutorial we showed you how to make a mesh of Wi-Fi routers. While thats a great solution if you
dont have any hard wire to connect them, it does have its short comings as it requires a lot of
configuration and a Wi-Fi mesh protocol that can introduce latency and reduced bandwidth. The
technique were about to outline simply adds Wi-Fi access points to any open Ethernet connection
on your hard-wired LANno fancy configuration or Wi-Fi Voodoo required.

What Youll Need

For this tutorial you need the following things:

One primary router
One or more secondary routers
One physical port on the primary router and one direct Ethernet cable link for each
secondary router
Thats all you need! You dont even, technically, need any fancy after market firmware like Tomato
or DD-WRT. That merits repeating. Although were going to be using Tomato-powered routers, you
can use just about any stock Wi-Fi router around without flashing the firmware. Unlike other
Wi-Fi tutorials weve shared that involve deep mucking around in the guts of a customized router,
this tutorial simply requires that you are able to change the basic Wi-Fi access point settings on your
secondary routers.

Getting Started: Resetting The Secondary Router

For the purposes of clarity, were going to refer to the primary router as the Primary Router and
the secondary router as the Secondary Router. Simple, yes, but it ensures were all on the same
page and not applying the settings to the wrong device.
Again, although were using TomatoUSB these instructions can be applied to nearly every router on
the market. Read over the whole guide and then apply the steps, slightly adapted for different menu
structures, to your router.
The first thing you want to do is reset your Secondary Router (not your Primary Router) so you can
work with a clean slate. Plug your Secondary Router directly into a desktop or laptop machine via
the Ethernet port. Navigate to Administration > Configuration > Restore Default Configuration
and select Erase all data in NVRAM memory (thorough). Click OK.
The default login/password after a clean wipe in Tomato is admin/admin. You should change the
password immediately by navigating to Administration -> Admin Access. While were in the Admin

Access menu we can change two things. First, change the color scheme of Tomato to easily
distinguish between default Tomato installation and secondary access points.

The color setting is found near the top of the Admin Access page under Web Admin -> Color
Scheme. We selected blue. To change the password scroll down to the bottom and plug in a new
password in the Password section. Makes sure to click Save at the bottom or your changes will not
be applied. Tomato will, immediately after you click Save, prompt you to login again. Use login:
admin and password: whatever new password you just created.

Configuring The Secondary Router

Once youve reset the Secondary Router and assigned a new password its time to configure it. We
only need to make a handful of changes to the Secondary Router, and (in TomatoUSB at least) they
can all be made on a single page.

Navigate to Basic > Network within the GUI of the Secondary Router. We need to make a few
minor changes here. First you need to toggle WAN / Internet to Static. Theres no need to change
anything else in this sub-section.

Next you need to change the Router IP Address. This can be any number that isnt 1) the same as
your Primary Router or 2) in the slate of assignable addresses used by your Primary Routers DHCP
server, such as 198.168.1.100-149. We simply switched ours to 192.168.1.2 to indicate it was the
first of the secondary routers attached to our network.
Plug in the address of your Primary Router for the first Static DNS slot. Toggle off DHCP Server.
The Secondary Router (and another other routers you may add in as future access points) need to
refer to the Primary Router for their DNS settings and DHCP assignments in order to keep the setup
simple and allow all network changes to be made easily from the Primary Router.

Next, you have the Wireless section. Within the Wireless section you need to make a few changes.
First, ensure Enable Wireless is checked. Second, set Wireless Mode to Access Point. You can
leave the Wireless Network Mode on Auto or enforce a specific mode (like G Only).
The SSID should be the same as your other Wi-Fi access points (like the Primary Router). The
security type, encryption type, and shared key should also be the same. Note: If youre having
trouble with the setup, its often useful to change the Secondary Routers SSID to something like
wireless2 to distinguish it from wireless (the name of the Primary Router) and make signal
testing and troubleshooting easier.

That said, the only place where the Wireless setup should differ from the Primary Router is the
Channel selection. You want to select a channel for your access points that does not conflict with
channels used by the Primary Router. Refer to this chart to select an appropriate channel:

Lets say that your Primary Router is using Channel 1. For your Secondary Router you can select
Channel 6 or Channel 11 as a clear channel to minimize interference. For quick reference here are
are some combinations you can use to keep the communication channels clear and leave space for a
future access point:
1, 6, 11
2, 7, 12
3, 8, 13
Once youve finished selecting an open channel, click Save to commit all your changes to the
Secondary Router. Once the changes are saved, unplug the Secondary Router from the computer
youve been using to configure it and take it to the Ethernet jack you intend to plug it into. Run an
Ethernet cable from the wall jack to one of the LAN ports on the Secondary Router (not the WAN
port). Plug in the power cord to boot it up. Your secondary access point should now be online and
accessible to the Wi-Fi devices nearby. As an added bonus you can also use the Secondary Router as
a basic network switchany nearby Ethernet dependent devices, such as a game console or desktop
computer, can be plugged right into the remaining LAN ports on the Secondary Router.
You can repeat this entire process with additional routersjust pay attention to the channel you
select for each router to try and keep the interference to a minimum.