Wireless range extender problem

[Tairetsu]

Alright,I have no absolutely no idea of anything when it comes to networking,but the situation in my house is pretty shitty,my room is on the whole opossite extreme end of my house,and in a second floor,this is a very old house defnitely not meant to have wireless communication flowing efficiently trough it.And so I had to use a lan cable that went from the first floor,trough the roof into my room.That cable broke recently,so I moved the modem to my room,and decided to get a wireless extender that would pick up the modem wireless signal and retransmit it to the other computers that do not need cables,so,my router connects fine to it,using the button method,the issue is my modem doesn't,and the rest of my family has no idea about my Router's network,it has a different name and password and I really do not wanna go trough the hazard that it must be to reconfigure the modem,and then the router (which I know its easier,kinda).

 

So I tough I would connect it to the modem instead,the modem is kinda old and doesn't have the button to connect directly,but when I tried to do it manually,I go trough the install wizard,and when it's time for it to configure itself it gives me an error,and it tells me to check if its the right model,which it is,and to check my network,which its fine.

 

Now the instructions have a more complicated,detailed way,using the IP adress of the device,but when I try to use it my browser just tells me it cannot connect,thats with the default settings,if I configure my computer to forcefully use the IP of the modem then I cannot connect to the internet (im not even gonna pretend I have any idea of how that works),so im kinda stuck,and i'm dumb,and I can't really fix it because I don't have the necesary knowledge.

 

So,halp,pls,if it helps,the wireless extender i'm trying to connect is the TL-WA730RE by TP-LINK,at least a bit of a class on networking would be useful,any help really.

[Zorro_zz]

Short answer: Fix the cable! Believe me, it will save you a lot of headaches. Wireless extenders perform terribly in ideal situation, let alone non-ideal ones. (I too have an old house, and went through the same issue trying to get connection to my living room at the other end of the house - ended up throwing a cable through the outside of the house, haven't had a problem since).

 

Now let's assume that's not an option, and I reiterate that you should do all you can to make it an one. I gathered from your question that you have a modem/wireless access point, a router, and the range extender. I can't quite figure out how you have it setup from your explanation; are the router and modem on the same room, both with with wireless AP (Access Point) configured? Is the router connected to the modem LAN-WAN? LAN-LAN? Configure your computer to forcefully use the IP of the modem?? If you could give ma a clearer picture that would help, but since I don't have it I'll give you what I think is the optimal setup.  

 

Since your modem is old, as you mentioned, you want to give it as less work as possible, so you'll want to disable all the non-modem capabilities: AP, DHCP, etc. You mentioned you don't want to reconfigure, but it seems like the range extender will have trouble connecting to it, if it can at all. Then you'll want to connect your router's WAN port (the one that  says Internet) to the one in your modem (if it has one dedicated for that, if not then any of the LAN ports - do that before you disable DHCP on your modem and you shouldn't have to configure anything). Then you can use just your router for wireless connectivity. If you don't want to reconfigure all the devices, you can set the SSID on the router the same as the one the modem had, and the same password, that way all devices will connect automatically. Then you can connect the range extender to the router, as you did before, and place it midway between it and where most of the other devices are. Again, this will most likely perform poorly. 

 

The ideal solution would be to restore the cable, and connect a second router to the other end configured as an AP. That will give you good WiFi coverage and seamless roaming. Let me know if you'd like to know how to do that. 

 

I hope this helped. I tried to make it as simple and concise as possible, but I might have done a terrible job at that. I can help you through the configuration I mentioned above if you have trouble with it.

 

Good luck and cheers!