[FAQ] Using two routers together/ Extending Wi-Fi

uzi123

Hi mate, cheers for your reply! Unfortunately since researching this extensively I've found it seems to be a common problem:

Re: Home Hub 3 and wireless access points plugged ... - BTCare Community Forums

Seems like I won't be able to have seamless roaming again

mickevh

A nuance of wi-fi roaming that many people miss is that it is the client device that decides if/when to roam from one AP to another, not the AP's (routers.)

As long as you set up the same SSID, PSK, security type etc. etc. in both AP's, there's no reason why seamless roaming shouldn't work, but I repeat it's entirely up to the client device as to whether they roam or not.

If you can roam fro A to B then it would tend to suggest all the parameters are correct and thence there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to roam from B to A.

But some clients are finicky. An old laptop I use at work for testing, (250 plus AP's there,) will doggedly hang on to whatever AP it's in session with until it absolutely has to roam - even with the clients "roaming aggressiveness" control turned all the way up.

So I can be sat in a room "getting only 1 bar" even though I know there are dozen better "signals" available. There's nothing much I can do about that in the "the system" as the problem lies entirely in the roaming algorithm in my ratty PC.

uzi123

It doesn't even go A to B unfortunately.

All this leads me to believe the BT Homehub is a bunch of crap!

mickevh

I doubt it's a matter of crapness, it sounds more like there's some configuration different between the two. In the "N" wi-fi spec's there's a lot of "options" available and if they don't all match, it's possible your clients won't roam. Without sight of the settings you have configured in both routers, it's going to be difficult to assess.

EDIT (Apr-2013) - Subsequent to writing this post, I came to possess an HH3 and did a bit of testing and found the same problems as described here with roaming. It's covered chapter and verse in another thread, but basically, I can't roam to an HH3 with any kind of wi-fi security/encryption turned on. It's fine if you run unencrypted, but as soon as you enable WPA and/or WPA2, roaming fails. So it seems I have to eat my words and accept that there does seem to be some issue roaming to HH3's.

uzi123

Ok mate here goes:

Ssid HH3Uzi
WPA & WPA2 (tried just WPA too)
I believe it's TKIP
Both are set to bgn (actually my old O2 box didn't have N, maybe something there??)

Cheers

mickevh

Mmm - doesn't seem much wrong there. If your other AP exactly matches those settings then it should work. However, here's a few suggestions.

If possible, enable both TKIP and AES/CCMP/RSN (the latter goes by different names.) TKIP was a klugde to get around "broken" WEP security using WEP hardware. Increasingly everything is moving to AES. If all your client devices support AES, I'd dump TKIP entirely (on both routers.)

Not much uses "B" wifi these days. If none of your clients need it, I'd also turn that off. (I don't think that's the cause of your problem, but it's good housekeeping.)

By way of a test, give your AP's different SSID's temporarily and check that your clients really can associate with both AP's successfully when the only difference between them is the SSID name.

Turn off "N" temporarily and test if it works in a "G" only environment. Likewise, test with "N" only. The G spec was/is more prescriptive about it's implementation and there's not much leeway for interpretation. "N" has a lot more "options" available to the implementors, so it's possible that you're client likes one AP's "N" implementation but not the other. Or it's possible the AP's are offering up variants of N so different to each other that the client won't regard them as "similar" enough to be able to flip from one to the other.

Make sure both AP's are on very different radio channels so they don't interfere with each other.

If everything talks WPA2, ditch WPA and take any incompatibilities there out of the equation.

Ultimately it may be down to some methodical slogging through all the options to find out what works and what doesn't. Sometimes IT problems are "just like that" and there's nothing for it but to roll up ones sleaves and slog though changing/testing one thing at a time until the culprit/solution is found.

uzi123

Tried using only WPA2 still no joy. Even if I set up the AP to have a different SSID I still have the same issue.

I can connect to the AP or HH3 however when I then try to connect to the other one it won't let me till I forget the other network.

It's like the HH3 already sees me on the system so is not allowing me to reconnect. This happens with both my iphone and ipad (the only two wireless devices I have).

mickevh

I really doubt it's that. If you think about it, BT are like to be shipping HH's  by the gazillion to people who have HH and only the HH as their wi-fi AP. Why would they bother to write in some code to "monitor everything not connected to HH and don't accept connection if someone connected elsewhere tries to connect to HH." There's just no reason to write such a bit of software when so few people are going to use it, and in any case why would they want to?

Do you try setting both AP's "G" only mode and see if that made any difference...?

uzi123

I'm sure they haven't done it on purpose, just think maybe it is an inherent problem. It seems to be with the Homehub3 type B, the latest model I believe. It seems to be coming a common problem on the BT forums.

Unfortunately from what I an tell the HH has no option for just G

kikapu

I am currently considering having two routers for my home and wondered if you think the below will work.

I am getting BT infinity installed and as the main (only) BT socket is in the hall the router is likely to be installed there too.  This is fine for wifi access throughout the house (its not a big house) but I have a NAS, HTPC and xbox360 in the living room I want connected.

Can I install a seperate 'router' in the living room connecting the NAS, HTPC and xbox into it.  Most of the time I would not have an ethernet cable connecting the two 'routers' and as such the living room router would be offline but this would still enable me to stream between the NAS and HTPC or phones tablets etc.  I would then only connect the two routers when the HTPC needed to go online to scrap metadata for my media or I wanted to play xbox live.

I would follow the setup on the first page to configure the routers but basically keep removing the connection between the two devices!  Would the assigned IP addresses still be retained when the two routers are not connected to each other?  Also as DHCP would be turned off on the living room 'router' I guess I would have to set up IP addresses for anything I might want to stream to phones, tablets etc