Computer won't recognize range expander

[LwnmwnMan2]

I run a wireless network to a computer in the shop, about 100' from the house.

I can get a signal to the range expander, and the computer recognizes the range expander, but as it configures the expander, it drops the signal, and goes back to being "poor" or the speed it was before the range expander was installed.

Any ideas?

[Jim Almquist]

I am by no means a expert but I really wonder if the problem may be something to do with what channel your wireless router is running on and your expander needs to be configured to the same channel. You would still see signal strength but you would never connect.

The way I found out about channels in a router is we had a customer that was losing his internet connection and we found out it only happened to one computer and he was running wireless and the only time it dropped is when the cordless phone rang. Changed the channel and never had a problem again.

[upnorth]

Couple things, is the range expander broadcasting the same SSID(wireless network name) and also make sure it is set to the same 802.11 type probably b, g, n as your original Access Point. You may need to check on the channel as mentioned before, you would want 1, 6 or 11 to be the channel.

[LwnmwnMan2]

The router is "N" and the expander is b/g.

It was working before, but the one day all the expanders kicked off (2) of them, completely different areas.

I thought about the channel as well.

The computer in the shop, it recognizes the expander and says the signal is excellent, but before the configuration is complete, it goes back to a poor signal.

[upnorth]

Does the expander recognize the original wireless AP and it's network. It could be that the expander/repeater is not broadcasting the same network. Is the expander/repeater capable of n too?

A good place to start would be to power both devices down and power them up again, if you have not done that yet. You would be surprised at how many times a restart of these things will cure this kind of stuff.

[LwnmwnMan2]

The range expander is NOT "N", but as I said, it worked before.

We've done the power down so many times, it's not funny.

I've been so busy running firewood the last 3-4 days I haven't had a chance to test different things.

1/2 the time I'm posting from the seat of the tractor loading for the next run.

I'm taking Sunday off, the back is starting to let go, and I'll be working on this then.

[upnorth]

Here is something to try. Completely disconnect from your current wireless, then get to where you would be connected to your expander/repeater and see if that works. Sound to me that for some reason the PC just won't roam to the repeater. It could be that the repeater is having a problem authenticating you to the wireless. Without some sort of logs it is only a guess.

[LwnmwnMan2]

Okay, got on the chat with Linksys (company that made range expander).

I couldn't get the range expander's IP address to bring up the web ui, so I ended up making a static IP and accessing the range expander that way.

I then manually set all the settings and now everything works perfectly.