Additional wireless point

[Willrob]

My N wireless router is sited at the top of my house where the DSL line comes in & is configured OK. WLAN working OK, although laptops and other wireless clients down at the bottom of the house get a poor signal. I have a pair of ethernet over powerline (Homeplug) adaptors that provide an ethernet onnection from the router to the basement (for my home server). I'd like to add a further wireless access point in the basement to boost signal strength, using that connection.

My question is: is a wireless access point (AP) the correct equipment or should I buy something else? I am not specifically looking for a wireless repeater: I want to add additional wireless access at the end of an ethernet connection and I don't think I want a wireless bridge because that's almost the inverse of what I'm trying to do.

Ideally I would like all wireless to be on one station set and password. Is this possible? Can I run the built-in wireless in my router and a second wireless point on the end of the homeplug ethernet connection as two parts of the same wireless net (ie configure the basement wireless point with the same settings as the routers wireless config.) or do I need separate SSID's and wireless channels for both (ie two 'cells' on the same network).

Any advice greatly appreciated. Am I barking up the wrong tree here? Would a wireless repeater be a simpler and better soution? I am unconvinced they performvery well.

Any assistance appreciated. As they say, a little knowledge is dangerous & I certainly don't know enough to get to the right answer here...

Many hhanks in advance

 

[Mike_G_D]

An AP in the basement is the correct choice. You can set it up with the same SSID and channel but I think it might be better to use the basement AP on a different channel than the topside router (i.e. use channel 1 up top and channel 11 in the basement). For ease of "roaming" you could use the same SSID so that a mobile device or laptop carried between locations will relatively easily switch to the strongest signal with no manual intervention. Done this way, the encryption type and key as well as the SSID must be identical for both links.

On the other hand, this doesn't always work perfectly such that the mobile device might "hang" onto the wrong (more relatively distant and weaker signal strength) wireless link. To get around this, if you don't mind a little occasional manual intervention, you could assign a slightly different name to the SSID of the basement AP so that you can easily SEE which signal your mobile device is using (since Windows does not show channels in its wireless network connection status and available networks windows but it will, of course, show the SSID name). You could simply use the same SSID as up top but with an "_basement" added to the name, for example. Set the new SSID as another preferred network to connect to by adding it to the preferred networks list (done automatically if you connect to it once anyway). This way, for example, if you take a mobile device from upstairs down to the basement and want to make sure it is connected to the basement AP you can verify that by simply looking at the SSID and change to the correct one manually if necessary. In this case, you can use the same encryption key and type for both links for simplicity or choose to use a completely different key for the basement AP - it will work either way as long as the mobile devices are configured appropriately.

-Mike