Can I connect two routers at home?

Question

Wifi doesn't reach the very top floor of my house that well as the router is connected at the bottom floor. Can I connect another router on the middle floor? Will this work?

Answer 1

You either need a wifi extender/booster or consider powerline networking - these use the household wiring instead of a long Ethernet cable. You plug 1 adapter into the Ethernet port of the router and local mains socket the other adapter into the distant PC/Laptop/game console and a mains socket. If you replace the distant powerline Ethernet adapter with a powerline wifi adapter you can create a local hotspot a good distance from the router.

http://www.solwise.co.uk/net-powerline-av-index.htm

http://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/powerline-and-coax/



Some but not all routers can be used as wifi extenders - you would need to check the documentation, if not just buy one they are not that expensive.

Other answerers have suggested running an Ethernet cable and then attaching a second router as an access point, while this works you still have the problem of running a cable from the router to the middle floor and as long as the rest of the household don't mind this is perfectly acceptable

HTH

David

Answer 2

The best solution is to run a cat 5 cable to a midpoint. Then change 1 router to an Access Point. An AP is just a switch but with WIFI. Plugging the router daisy chain fashion is unnecessary and creates 2 networks. Some routers have a preset way to change to AP mode. Most can be converted by turning things off like DHCP and firewall. Google converting to AP mode for your router.



APs are connected LAN to LAN, you ignore the router's WAN port.



This is by far the best solution for performance.

Answer 3

It is technically possible to utilize two routers on the same home network. The benefits of a two router network include:

supports more devices - if your first router is a wired Ethernet router, it supports only a limited number of connected devices (typically only four or five). A second router provides more open ports allowing additional computers to join the network.

can simply hybrid network setups - if you have a wired home network and want to connect some new Wi-Fi devices to it, installing a wireless router as the second router allows those devices to connect while allowing the rest of the network to remain on Ethernet.

wireless range / reach - adding a second wireless router to a Wi-Fi network can extend the reach of your network to accommodate far away devices.

network isolation - If you heavily utilize the network connection between certain computers (such as frequent large file transfers, or LAN gaming), installing those computers to use one router, isolates the network traffic from affecting the other router and all of its attached devices.

Installing a Two Router Network

Installing a router to work as the second one on a home network requires special configuration. Setup involves choosing a good location, ensuring the right physical connections, and configuring IP address settings (including DHCP ).

All the best!

Answer 4

well you could use the second router as a repeater which basically takes the signal from your original router and sends it off again but the second router will ofc be closer to you thus giving better signal. Check here for details on how to do this http://lifehacker.com/5563196/turn-your-old-router-into-a-range-boosting-wi-fi-repeater. If you don't like this description then just google Router Repeater

Answer 5

Normal household wifi routers are not made to connect them with each other. You have wifi extenders that you can purchase, wifi boosters, wifi-over-power (or internet-over-power with wifi module) and so on. Check amazon for the necessary equipment.

It's just not going to work with 2 wifi routers :)