help with amped wireless repeater.

[monochromatik]

sorry for posting this here, i just have no clue where else to ask this and hopefully someone here with more networking expertise can help me out.

i'm in a unique situation of temporarily living in a hotel along with another person. the wireless signal here is pretty bad thanks to shoddy networking. as far as i know from talking to the owners, they have a modem which has cable running along to access points throughout the hotel. for some reason they're all wireless g access points and the access point nearest to me is housed in a closed room with thick concrete walls. the most i can get with signal from my amped wireless sr10000 is 60% even though they say 70% minimum. unfortunately i'm running into a pretty major issue. the internet here requires going through a login page and hitting a connect now button. with my last netgear extender, there was no issue with this. but with the amped, if we have 3 devices connected at once, devices get knocked off and have to reconnect and it's a never-ending loop of that. it works fine if only my laptop and phone are on, but two laptops and a phone isn't doable.

i've tried the following things:

- reflashed firmware
- changed the following things in advanced settings:
- fragment threshold to 2304, 1568, 784
- rts threshold to 2306, 1068, 534
- beacon interval to 50 and 150
- long preamble to short preamble
- 20/40 mhz coexistence enabled
- changed dhcp to client and server
- tried static ip (although i may have done it wrong)

any idea what else i could try? is there some magical combination of settings i'm missing out on? let me know. thanks.

 

[overdrive31]

Try using wifi virtual router with the laptop if it's Win7 or newer. Have to warn you, it will most likely be slow. It is repeating the signal twice, splitting the speed in half, and then in half again. Couldn't tell ya what the problem is. Could be an access control list not allowing more than so many through the captive portal, everything behind your extender will use the extender's MAC address in the access control list, while it may allow 2 for duplicate error purposes, it will not allow a third. Doesn't explain why the Netgear extender worked though. If the signal is strong enough, you could just use the laptop virtual router and skip using the extender.

 

[monochromatik]

the access control list is off. i realize asking for help with an extender/situation that most people don't have/haven't been in is probably difficult to get help with though. so are you saying to just have one device hooked up to the amped wireless extender ssid then use the virtual router to share that? i honestly think i might just pony up for the netgear ac extender with the 7 dbi antennas even though there aren't many reviews of it out there.

 

[overdrive31]

I'm talking about the access control the click through captive portal controls. *connect now button*, the hotel's access control list...

I was saying you could prevent having to repeat the signal twice by just hooking up the laptop to the hotel wifi and use the virtual router to share with other devices without using the extender. But, you could use the extender with just the one device and share from it with virtual router for the remaining. Only speed will be fairly slow. If you didn't mind the virtual router laptop being wired into the extender that could prevent it from being too slow also, if you absolutely need the extender to get a signal at all.

 

[remixedcat]

Match the channel width. I had some issues when I had one configured to 20 Mhz and the other to 40. When those didn't match i had some connection issues.

Also tell them (if you can) to whitelist the extender's MAC address. Amped's MAC addresses start with F8:7B:8C

Could you also please find out the access point that you are repeating's vendor info if you can. You can use InSSIDer or the amped version and it will show the vendor. Some of those are tricky with extenders and also stuff like Roku players have a tough time with hotel captive portal type networks. Those typically require whitelisting.

 

[monochromatik]

I'm talking about the access control the click through captive portal controls. *connect now button*, the hotel's access control list...

I was saying you could prevent having to repeat the signal twice by just hooking up the laptop to the hotel wifi and use the virtual router to share with other devices without using the extender. But, you could use the extender with just the one device and share from it with virtual router for the remaining. Only speed will be fairly slow. If you didn't mind the virtual router laptop being wired into the extender that could prevent it from being too slow also, if you absolutely need the extender to get a signal at all.

oh, well, the problem is signal strength. multiple people can hook up to the access point without the extender, it's just weak.

Match the channel width. I had some issues when I had one configured to 20 Mhz and the other to 40. When those didn't match i had some connection issues.

Also tell them (if you can) to whitelist the extender's MAC address. Amped's MAC addresses start with F8:7B:8C

Could you also please find out the access point that you are repeating's vendor info if you can. You can use InSSIDer or the amped version and it will show the vendor. Some of those are tricky with extenders and also stuff like Roku players have a tough time with hotel captive portal type networks. Those typically require whitelisting.

is there an easy way to tell what channel width the access point is configured at?

i'll see if they'll do that but i highly doubt they will.

according to what i found, it's Senao International Co., Ltd., whatever that is, haha.

 

[remixedcat]

on inssider or analytics it would say max rate 130-150 for N 20 Mhz

I don't know much about senao

 

[monochromatik]

well, they're g access points. they're operating at 54 mbps.