Routers as WAP?

[MegamanXGold]

In a house on a single floor (two floors but we only care about the one), the infinite wisdom of the house builders and ISP has a Shaw (Aerris) wireless modem in the garage, and on the opposite side of the wall from the garage is the kitchen, near a fridge, microwave, stove, et cetera.

The house is, however, wired for Ethernet and those wall ports are connected to the modem.

My plan is to go out and buy one (or two) cheap D-Link Wireless-N router(s) from my local Walmart, plug them in to a room (or two) and set them as WAPs.

My question is, if I do as some website guides suggest - disabling DHCP and matching the SSIDs, passwords, and wireless channels to the base modem's wireless router, will I have any issues?

Buying $200 access points is not an option, and having the wireless devices in the house bouncing between the choppy garage modem and a Range Extender (that might be no better in this case) is not appealing.

So, for an on-the-budget solution, is there anything I should know going into this?  Thank you very much!

P.S.: Sorry if this has been asked before, I couldn't find a search function for the forum.

[Aelita Sophie]

I'll be following this, as I'm interested as well. 

[SCHISCHKA]

i would turn off the garage wifi and put one ceiling AP on the ground floor ceiling in the center of the house. that should cover everywhere

[MegamanXGold]

There is a separate WiFi network for the downstairs suite.  Only one floor is relevant.
Also, what is a "Ceiling AP"?  Like, just one of the cheap routers mounted on the ceiling?  The family wouldn't like that one bit.
Also, disabling the access point in the garage is not an option - working wireless is a must in the garage, and if it doesn't work well through the wall one way, it likely won't do better in the other direction either.

Thank you SCHISCHKA, but my original question still stands. 

[brwainer]

If you go the route of disabling DHCP and matching the wireless settings, you also need to remember to only use the LAN ports, never the WAN port, even for the link to the other router, and you need to change the WAP's IP address to be in the same subnet as the router's IP, but not different. So if the router is 192.168.1.1, you would set the WAP's LAN IP to be 192.168.1.2 (assuming that IP isn't already used by something else on your network)

 

EDIT: Doing it this way works with all routers and is my recommended setup if someone can't afford true APs

[MegamanXGold]

@brwainer: Thank you, that lines up with the guides I found.  You mention the subnet, is that related to the default gateway?  And since I'm on the subject, is there anything I should have in mind for what to set for those?

I suppose my biggest concerns are, will there be wireless conflicts?
Imagine a square for the floor, in the bottom middle is the garage, but it's wireless is only useful for the bottom right quarter of the square.  Using the built-in ethernet, an access point (the cheap d-link N router) is placed in the top left to cover the whole left side of the square, and possibly one more access point to cover the top right quarter.

So, will devices like iPhones, Samsung tablets, Windows 10 netbooks, etc. get confused connecting to this network?
Will it work like a commercial network and allow seamless connectivity, like a YouTube video not being interrupted during transitioning?
Will there be spots in the network where a device connects back and forth between APs preventing a good connection? (I read somewhere that Wireless-G and Wireless-N on the same band causes constant handshakes, interrupting the connectivity?)
Should I have a minimum distance between APs?
For anyone experienced with Shaw Wireless Gateways (by Aerris), will the Gateway flat-out refuse to work with the routers even if their DHCP is disabled?

The requirements for the home owners is that they have 100% coverage in their home (main floor), and that there needs to be a good connection for wireless security cameras in the near future.

Thank you so much for your input!

[SCHISCHKA]

1 hour ago, MegamanXGold said:

There is a separate WiFi network for the downstairs suite.  Only one floor is relevant.
Also, what is a "Ceiling AP"?  Like, just one of the cheap routers mounted on the ceiling?  The family wouldn't like that one bit.
Also, disabling the access point in the garage is not an option - working wireless is a must in the garage, and if it doesn't work well through the wall one way, it likely won't do better in the other direction either.

Thank you SCHISCHKA, but my original question still stands. 

no you can get routers made to sit in the ceiling. they kinda look like smoke detectors. something like this

https://www.gowifi.co.nz/wireless-access-points/apc-button-af.html

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, MegamanXGold said:

You mention the subnet, is that related to the default gateway?  And since I'm on the subject, is there anything I should have in mind for what to set for those?

The subnet, defined by the IP address and subnet mask, is all the IP addresses that a computer will think are local, and will try to communicate with directly by MAC address, instead of sending the data to teh default gateway. Nearly all home routers use a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, or /24 - you should always use the same subnet mask as the device that is running DHCP, even on static IP devices. For your WAPs the default gateway won't matter, since they will expect the default gateway to be on the WAN interface, which you won't be using at all.

 

1 hour ago, MegamanXGold said:

I suppose my biggest concerns are, will there be wireless conflicts?
Imagine a square for the floor, in the bottom middle is the garage, but it's wireless is only useful for the bottom right quarter of the square.  Using the built-in ethernet, an access point (the cheap d-link N router) is placed in the top left to cover the whole left side of the square, and possibly one more access point to cover the top right quarter.

So, will devices like iPhones, Samsung tablets, Windows 10 netbooks, etc. get confused connecting to this network?

Even though you may set the SSID and password the same between the different routers/APs, they each still have their own BSSID (Binary SSID) aka MAC address, which is used as part of the wireless broadcast. SO devices will see multiple wireless networks, but understand that they all are connected to the same network. Hopping between these is governed solely by the devices - the only issue is that some devices don't roam aggressively enough, meaning that as you walk around they house they will stay connected to their current AP even when another is now a much better option. cheaper/older Android phones are the main culprit I'm aware of with this issue, and this is an issue even on enterprise wireless systems.

 

1 hour ago, MegamanXGold said:

Will it work like a commercial network and allow seamless connectivity, like a YouTube video not being interrupted during transitioning?

watching a youtube video, even a live stream, actually has some amount of data buffer, so you would rarely notice. The place that usually has problems is VOIP calls (any type of live audio/video chat) - the only solutions to that are expensive and complicated - even in the enterprise wireless systems that I'm involved with, we don't use them. In a normal situation, during the handoff you will experience about a second of stutter, but the call shouldn't drop.

 

1 hour ago, MegamanXGold said:

Will there be spots in the network where a device connects back and forth between APs preventing a good connection? (I read somewhere that Wireless-G and Wireless-N on the same band causes constant handshakes, interrupting the connectivity?)

If you have devices that are very aggressive about roaming (the opposite of the problem I mentioned before) then at any place where the wireless signals are about equally strong you may experience movement back and forth. But most devices don't move to another signal unless it is fairly decently stronger. As for G and N conflicting, I'm not really aware of that being an issue, but in general you want all the wireless networks in a system to be of the same type.

 

1 hour ago, MegamanXGold said:

Should I have a minimum distance between APs?

At the location where you intend to place the new AP(s), the existing wireless signal should be mediocre (which I think you already have). If you use a tool like InSSIDer that gives you teh signal strength, then you should first hold your device next to the modem to see what it's baseline strength is (e.g.-27 RSSI) and then at the place were you are going to put the AP you would want an RSSI that is at least 20 lower (-47 in my example). Closer to 0 means stronger for RSSI, and when right on top of a wireless device somewhere between -35 and -15 is acceptable.

 

If that's too complicated, I'd estimate 15-20 feet minimum between them.

 

1 hour ago, MegamanXGold said:

For anyone experienced with Shaw Wireless Gateways (by Aerris), will the Gateway flat-out refuse to work with the routers even if their DHCP is disabled?

The modem will have no idea these devices exist, and anything that connects to them wirelessly will be seen as an ethernet client. An AP is just transcoding the data between Wifi format and Ethernet format, and they share the same MAC addresses. The AP that is built in to your modem is working the same way, just that it has a direct connection to the "router" portion of the device (your modem is really a modem, router, switch, and AP combined, and each of those functions are more or less separate systems all on the same board)

[MegamanXGold]

Thank you Brwainer, that answers all my questions!   You're amazing!

@SCHISCHKA: Thank you, I don't know what that PoE stuff is, and my network will be 802.11n.  Also, we don't want to run new lines through the walls, and there's no existing ethernet ports in our ceilings.  That solution is $40 more expensive than the two units we plan to use as access points.  Thank you for your input though!