Powerline Adapters & Wireless Extenders

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Alexia Edwards
5 years ago
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1 Introduction If you suffer poor wireless connectivity in parts of your property, one solution is to run Ethernet cables from your routers LAN ports throughout your house to these devices. However, there are two main disadvantages, the cabling run can be difficult & unsightly and not all devices can use a wired connection There are however, several much neater & easier alternatives that might solve the problem. You can use Powerline Adapters, or wireless extenders and if you have a spare router, you may be able to configure that to act as an extender as well. See the section using a second router as a Wireless extender (AP). In more details these are:- Powerline adapters can be used to extend the LAN port from your router to a PC etc, over your house electrical wiring. You plug one unit into a power socket by the PC/laptop and connect an Ethernet cable between it & the PC. You then put plug another adapter in by the router, connect a second Ethernet cable between that & one of the LAN ports on the router. The two powerline adapters have to be paired together. You can use more than one pair of these in the same property. Wireless Extenders this allows the wireless signal to be boosted in areas of weak reception throughout the property. Useful video This video on YouTube helps to explains how to install these units, I don't know how old it is, so there might be better units available currently than those used in the video, but the principle is basically the same:- Page 1 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

2 Powerline Adapters These can be purchased from numerous suppliers and made by several manufacturers. Some points to consider before buying are:- A low standby power consumption when no data is being transmitted, some units only use about 0.4W in standby mode. The speed they operate between the two units (some only work at 85M, which is slow) as well as the speed they offer on the PC/Router side (100M or 1G). You should connect these adapters directly into wall power sockets, do not use extension cables as they may well reduce the speed that they operate at. I discovered one unconfirmed factor about them, which I hope does not upset your plans. The Powerline adapters may not work between two electric ring main circuits in your house. So if the router is downstairs & the other one upstairs and the two floors are on different rings mains from your consumer unit, they may not work, or not as good as you may expect. That said, the case may be worse if you have an RCD consumer unit, rather than one with fuses in it. However, some people have said that their ones worked fine. You may also get a slower speed between the two adapters, if they do work between the different mains power circuits. To check how many ring main circuits you have, you would need to get a qualified electrician to inspect your consumer unit for you. Powerline adapter troubleshooting Units do not seem to work:- Reset TalkTalk Powerline adapters:- Do a full reset on them first, and then ideally to pair them you should have them in double socket next to each other. To reset them it is normally a case of pressing the Reset button in for one second this should be documented in your user guide. Next press and long hold the pair button on first one until it starts flashing (listening), then press and let go pair button on second, they should pair up. Repeat for extra power lines, let new one you want to add 'listen' and press release on an already paired one. If in doubt, consult your user guide. Page 2 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

3 Wireless Extenders It is possible to purchase dedicated wireless extenders that can be used to extend a Wi-Fi signal to areas of poor reception. These come in various forms & often are combined with powerline adapters:- 1. Repeater type this connects to the router's Wi-Fi signal in an area where it is not too bad & repeats a fresh signal out from itself. How good this is will depend on the reception around the property. 2. Wi-Fi extender that connects back to the router via a powerline adapter. This is the best sort of extender, as it uses a wired connection between itself & the router and will normally provide the best signal to difficult to reach areas. Obviously a wired connection is not always practical. So the extender often has one powerline adapter built in to it (but not always check its specification first) and then pairs with another powerline adapter by the router, allowing a wired connection from there to the router. If you have a spare router, you maybe able to use that as the wireless extender. 3. There is a third option called WDS (Wireless Distribution System), which is an enhancement of option 1. This is where multiple wireless Access Points (APs) are linked together over their wireless networks. An Access Point is basically the same as the wireless side of a domestic broadband router. However, in the commercial arena it is very common to have separate Access Points, switches & routers. More details:- There are a few domestic broadband routers that will apparently support this, but it is only normally achieved via some non-standard firmware. Although I would have thought that this facility is aimed at commercial APs. Even when this option is offered, it does seem to be done in a proprietary manner, meaning if you have two APs made by different companies, their versions of WDS may not be compatible with each other & therefore will not work. Page 3 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

4 Wireless extenders incorporating powerline adapters As mentioned before, these represent the best wireless solution for the home environment, as the powerline adapters carry the LAN port from the router, via the mains wiring to another unit that incorporates a powerline adapter and the wireless extender in the same unit. These are often sold as a kit containing the powerline adapter that connects to the router & the combined powerline/wireless extender unit. The two units have to be paired together so as the routers LAN port is extended over the electrical wiring to the wireless extender. Some offer a cloning feature which initially requires a WPS connection to the router as well, allowing it to copy the wireless settings such as the network name (SSID) & password from your router. This should allow seamless connection changes as you move about the property based on which is giving the best signal to your device currently the router or the extender. Points to consider prior to purchasing these:- 1. They will work best if the router LAN ports operate at 1Gbps, rather than 100Mbps, the same is the case for the powerline adapter that is going to physically connect to the router, that should work at 1Gbps. Otherwise you may well have a number of devices all working at 300Mbps or more connected to the extender. If the connection between the router & the powerline via ethernet cable was only 100M, you would have a bottleneck, thus reducing their overall speed to the internet. 2. Pay particular attention to the wireless specification of the extender unit. Does it meet your requirements, some things to consider are:- Is it dual band (2.4GHz & 5GHz)? With 5GHz does it support a channel range of at least 36 to 116? There are other issues to consider such as Beamforming and MIMO, but the specifications may not always tell you this sort of information. Ideally you would have a dual band router as well, but it is not always essential, it really depends how congested the 2.4GHz band is in your area, you would need a Wi-Fi analyser to identify this. Although they often offer the ability to clone the wireless settings of the router, it is worth checking if you can manually go in & change the wireless channel on the unit. If it cloned the channel number as well, you could have the extender & the router causing each other a lot of interference. TalkTalk market a kit containing one powerline adapter to connect at the router end & the wireless extender unit:- I believe the units are actually made by D-Link, they are the DHP-308AV (router end) & DHP- W310AV (Wireless Extender) and they sell a starter kit containing one of each unit & market that as the DHP-W311AV. Some people have had problems connecting the wireless extender unit to the router via WPS to clone the WiFi settings. The unit does have a web management system where you can manually set Page 4 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

5 the wireless network name (SSID) & password, which is all that the WPS connection will do for you anyway. However, you will probably not be able to access this, because the default IP address of the DHP-W310AV is , which is not on your local network range at all & will not be reachable from you router's network. Whilst I can't guarantee the TalkTalk ones do not run their own firmware, you should be able to change the unit's IP address to something on the x network, so as you can later access it from your router's network. Disconnect the ethernet cable between the router & the DHP-308AV unit. Then reset the wireless extender unit (DHP-W310AV), by pressing it the reset button for about 5 seconds. Once the unit is back up, connect a wireless device to its default wireless network name (SSID) & password (see the label on the rear of the unit or look for a wireless configuration card in the box). Now open your web browser and go to:- Windows: Mac OS: or or (note the dot after both of these) Where WXYZ is the last 4 digits of the MAC address. The full address is available on the included Wireless Configuration Card. Personally I would try:- This video gives some idea of setting the D-Link version up (ignore the echo at the start of the video):- Follow the video through setting it to the same network name (SSID) as your router & the same password. Once you get to the end of the wizard in the video, you will see that you end up at a fairly standard D-Link interface, in here you should be able to change its IP address to something like , so as it is on the same IP network as your router. Check the wireless channel in use & make sure that it is not on the same channel as the router you can only use channels 1, 6 or 11 within the 2.4GHz range to prevent overlaps. If you need to check which is the best channels for this & the router, you can contact me for more information. Now you will need to log into you router and limit the DHCP server IP address range to: to Now reconnect the ethernet cable between the router & the DHP-308AV unit. Page 5 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

6 Using a second router as a wireless extender (AP) However, if you have a spare router, it may be possible to configure that to be a wireless extender (second wireless Access Point [AP]), as in example 2 above. However you will either need a wired connection, or a pair of powerline adapters to get a wired connection back to the router. How successful this is will depend of the wireless capabilities of each unit as well as the speed of the LAN ports on the two routers, for best results these should both be able to run at 1Gbps (not just the normal 100M), the same goes for the LAN port(s) on the powerline adapters you are going to use as well. The next few pages cover how to configure a spare router in this manner. Slave router configuration examples:- 1. Huawei HG523a & HG Huawei HG633/HG D-Link DSL D-Link DSL-3782 Page 6 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

Huawei HG523a & the HG533 Make sure that the slave router is totally disconnected from anything else & power it up. Connect to its network & log on to the router.

7 Huawei HG523a & the HG533 Make sure that the slave router is totally disconnected from anything else & power it up. Connect to its network & log on to the router. Then go to into Advanced mode and then navigate to:- Basic > LAN > LAN Host Settings Change its IP address from (the same IP address as the primary router) to , Submit this & you will probably have to reboot. Next log back in & go to:- Basic > LAN > DHCP Server Untick the Enable option & submit. Now go to:- Basic > WLAN > Wireless Settings Set the channel to a different channel within the 2.4GHz band to what the primary router is using. I would recommend the use of a Wi-Fi analyser to see the best one to use, you should only use channels 1, 6 or 11. Set the network name (SSID), security type (WPA2-PSK recommended) & password to the same as the primary router. Now go to:- Basic > WAN > WAN Connection Click on the NAS_0_38 interface at the top to highlight it & change the Connection Type option to Bridge, next tick all of the interfaces listed in Port binding :- Finally tick the DHCP Transparent Transmission :- Submit all of these changes. Log out of the router & power it off. Now connect back on the primary router & change its DHCP IP address range to go from to , so as it can't allocate the new IP address that the slave router is using. Connect an Ethernet cable between one of the LAN ports on each router, power it back on again. All should now be OK. Page 7 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

8 HG633/HG635 This is surprisingly easy to configure. The router does not need to be put into bridged mode as with most routers, maybe it works out what you have done & just adapts to it. Make sure that the slave HG633/635 is totally disconnected from the internet or the primary router before powering it up. See the note on Port Forwarding below. Router configuration First go to the primary router (the one connected to the ADSL or VDSL {fibre} line) & change its DHCP IP address range to go from to , so as it can't allocate the new IP address that the slave router will using. Next login to the secondary or extender HG633 (do not forget it must be isolated from the primary router at this point), currently its IP address is still Then go to:- Home Network > LAN Interface > LAN Interface Settings Change the router's IP address to , click Save & allow it to reboot the router:- Once it has rebooted log back in to it using the new IP address of & go to:- Home Network > LAN Interface > DHCP Server Untick the option Enable DHCP Server The same can be repeated under the IPv6 DHCP Server. Next the wireless channels, go to:- Home Network > Wireless Settings >Encryption Set the network name (SSID), security type (WPA2-PSK recommended) & password to the same as the primary router. Page 8 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

9 Next select the Wi-Fi channels to use:- Home Network > Wireless Settings > Advanced Settings Set the channel within the 2.4GHz section to a different channel to what the primary router is using. I would recommend the use of a Wi-Fi analyser to see the best one to use, you should only use channels 1, 6 or 11. Set the Wi-Fi network name (SSID) & password to the same as the primary router. Log out of the router & power it off. Basic connectivity You must connect the LAN 1 interfaces of both routers together, via an Ethernet cable or powerline adapters. With the connection between the two routers made, & the HG633 powered back up again, all should now be OK. Port Forwarding note With the HG633/HG635 as the extender or slave router, double port forwarding will not work. This is because there is no way to change the interface that the forwarding rules listen on. It will still be listening on the broadband/internet interface, not the LAN port from the modem/router. Page 9 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

DSL-3780 Assuming that the main router's IP address is 192.168.1.1 change its DHCP IP Address range to:- 192.168.1.3 192.168.1.254 Disconnect the DSL-3780 from the ADSL & do not connect it to the main router as yet.

This change is done by going to Setup > LAN Setup > Router Settings Once done, again click the Add/Apply button below the DHCP Settings section.

10 DSL-3780 Assuming that the main router's IP address is change its DHCP IP Address range to: Disconnect the DSL-3780 from the ADSL & do not connect it to the main router as yet. In this router, change its IP address to (if the main router uses a different network such as X set the slave router to be ). This change is done by going to Setup > LAN Setup > Router Settings Once done, again click the Add/Apply button below the DHCP Settings section. Next disable the DHCP server from the Advanced mode by going to:- Setup > LAN Setup > DHCP Server Tick Disable DHCP Server & click the Add/Apply button below the DHCP Settings section. Continued on next page. Page 10 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

11 Now put the DSL-380 into Bridge mode. To do this go to:- Setup > Internet Setup > WAN Settings Put a tick against Bridge Mode & click the Add/Apply button (some of the options on this page will now disappear). Go back to this same page & check in the WAN section below WAN Settings that the Connection Type is set to Bridged Only LLC. Now reboot this router. Note : if at any time the DSL-3780 router should reboot prior to being connected to the HG633 & up OK, your PC will no longer have an IP address & will not be able to communicate with the router. If this is the case, configure a static IP address on the device temporarily. Connection Next connect the DSL-3780 via say its LAN 1 port (do not use its Fibre port) back to a LAN port on the main router (this could be LAN 1 again, but you may have to check the documentation for the main router). Testing You will not get the Broadband or the Internet lights on at all on the DSL You will not see any entries in the DHCP Table of this router, as the DHCP server is disabled. Connect a device to the wireless or another LAN port on the DSL-3780 & ensure you get an IP address from the main router's DHCP server. I would also recommend trying to ping both the DSL ( ) and your main router ( ). Then you should be able to access both router's management systems via their respective IP addresses in your browser. Then make sure you can access the internet from the wired & wireless interfaces of this slave router. For one final check, make sure that you can also ping between devices connected to the wired/wireless interfaces of each router. Page 11 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

D-Link DSL-3782 In this example the main router's IP address is 192.168.1.1 change its DHCP IP Address range to:- 192.168.1.2 192.168.1.253 Disconnect the DSL-3780 from the ADSL & do not connect it to the main router as yet.

12 D-Link DSL-3782 In this example the main router's IP address is change its DHCP IP Address range to: Disconnect the DSL-3780 from the ADSL & do not connect it to the main router as yet. In this router, change its IP address to This change is done by going to:- Settings > Network (LAN) > Advanced Settings Whilst here disable its DHCP server as well:- Now put it in Bridged mode. To do this go to:- Settings > Internet (WAN) > Advanced Settings Make sure that the Connection Type is set to Bridge Only VC-Mux or Bridged IP LLC :- Or:- Page 12 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

13 Connection Next connect the DSL-3782 via say its LAN 1 port, ideally back to the LAN 1 port on the main router (you may have to check the documentation for the main router). Testing You will not get the Broadband or the Internet lights on at all on the DSL You will not see any entries in the DHCP Table of this router, as the DHCP server is disabled. Connect a device to the wireless or another LAN port on the DSL-3782 & ensure you get an IP address from the main router's DHCP server. I would also recommend trying to ping both the DSL ( ) and your main router ( ). Then you should be able to access both router's management systems via their respective IP addresses in your browser. Then make sure you can access the internet from the wired & wireless interfaces of this slave router. For one final check, make sure that you can also ping between devices connected to the wired/wireless interfaces of each router. Roaming Give both APs the same network name (SSID), the same security type (WPA2-PSK recommended), and the same wireless security passphrase. Many clients assume that these kinds of settings will be the same across all APs with the same SSID. There is no magic to making multiple-ap (roaming) networks work. Wireless clients just assume that all APs with the same SSID are configured similarly and are all just different points of access to the same underlying wired network. A client will scan all channels looking for APs publishing the SSID it wants, and will pick whichever one suits its needs best (usually that means whichever one shows the highest signal strength). Once on the network, clients stay with the same AP as long as it is meeting the client's needs (i.e. as long as its signal strength is above a "good enough" threshold). If the client later thinks it could be better off with another AP on that network, it will do periodic scans of all channels looking for other APs publishing that SSID. If a scan turns up a candidate AP that is enough better than the AP it is currently on, it will automatically roam to the other AP, usually without so much as a missed frame. One roaming caveat: As another commenter pointed out, there are definitely poorly engineered clients out there with poor roaming algorithms or thresholds, which don't actually roam when they should, and thus end up being too "sticky", staying on the first AP they joined well after they could have been getting better performance and reliability with another AP that they are now closer to. Sometimes it helps to force the client's Wi-Fi interface to rejoin the network when you notice that a client has stuck to the wrong AP. If you have a lot of these buggy clients, then using the same SSID for multiple APs might not work well for you; you might want to use different SSIDs so you can more easily monitor and control which AP your client is associated to.* Assuming both APs are configured similarly and are connected to the same underlying network, roaming is seamless and invisible to the user (except nerds like me who run tools to watch for these Page 13 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

14 things). Roaming events are invisible to applications using the network, although some low-level parts of the network stack might be notified of the event, so that, for example, your DHCP client can double-check that this new AP really is connected to the same network, so it can be sure your DHCP lease is still valid on this network. Some other users' Answers and Comments on this question erroneously suggested that wireless protocols or features like wireless relay or WDS might be needed for roaming, but that is absolutely incorrect. Those features are just ways to replace a wired Ethernet backhaul with a wireless one. For the sake of completeness, I should mention that there is a set of technologies, some proprietary, some standardized in IEEE F, known generally as Inter-Access Point Protocol. IAPP is a method by which generally enterprise-class APs can communicate with each other over the backhaul to optimize client roaming. But that's just an optimization, not a prerequisite for roaming. Roaming works "well enough" on networks both small and large without any IAPP going on. Page 14 of 14 Date : 01/08/2107

screenshots from it. Then once you have sent them to me, I do the rest & make recommendations to help sort the problem.

screenshots from it. Then once you have sent them to me, I do the rest & make recommendations to help sort the problem. Introduction This is a large document, but there is a lot to cover on this subject. Plus where any configuration changes are outlined, this covers just about all TalkTalk routers, which in itself contributes