Linksys WRE54G Repeater + BT Home Hub - endless problems

[Ploper001]

I have a BT Home Hub, and while it was fine signal-wise when I was in this rented house by myself for the Summer (although it needed resetting every day), since everyone else has moved in and all connected wirelessly, I get signals ranging from excellent to poor, seemingly randomly.

Someone else in the house, who was also having problems bought a Linksys WRE54G Repeater to help sort out our connection upstairs. Following the instructions in the quick start and ran the program on the CD, but this resulted in an error message ("could not connect to AP in repeater mode" or similar). I went to the BT Hub Config page and added the WRE54G as an accepted repeater, but the error message persisted. I then went through this whole process of changing my IP Address to manual and accessing the repeater's config page, and updated the firmware to the latest UK version. I also turned off the WPA2 AES protection on the hub in case that was the problem.

Since then, it seems when running their program it completes successfully, but then if I connet to the network via the repeater, I have no internet access. I cannot access the router's config page, although I can access the repeater's config page. If I connect to the network via the router itself, I have full internet access as before.

What is going on here? I can't think of any other settings to change. I've tried it with security turned off and with WPA2 AES too, neither seem to work. Any ideas oh wise ones ?

 

[G0AOZ]

I've very little knowledge of the BT Home Hub, but have to say I'm surprised that it apparently suggests other makes of Access Point are acceptable as repeaters.

When setting up the Linksys, what IP Addresses are you using for the BT Hub and the Linksys? You've checked it's using the same channel as the BT Hub...

Presumably your WiFi client software on the PC sees both Access Points, and shows their parameters (apart from IP and MAC) to be identical.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[Ploper001]

I've very little knowledge of the BT Home Hub, but have to say I'm surprised that it apparently suggests other makes of Access Point are acceptable as repeaters.

Me too really, but here is the page:

When setting up the Linksys, what IP Addresses are you using for the BT Hub and the Linksys? You've checked it's using the same channel as the BT Hub...

I left them as default - BT Home Hub is 192.168.1.254 and the repeater is 192.168.1.240. They are both on Channel 1.

Presumably your WiFi client software on the PC sees both Access Points, and shows their parameters (apart from IP and MAC) to be identical.

Yep, the software seems to work fine (for once lol) in picking up both access points, but as I said only when I access via the BT Home Hub can I get internet access.

 

[schtek]

i did a scan outside the house the other day, 6 i found of these hubs... all on the same channel number, have you changed its number i go to the top and bottom on my 3 units in the house and have no problems, might help!!

"Practice makes Perfect"
CPO rt'd RN

 

[Ploper001]

Well there are 4 other nearby units using Channel 6, 1 using Channel 8 and another using Channel 4. I guess I could try changing the channel to 11 or something, that might improve the actual hub but it shouldn't affect the range extender.

 

[G0AOZ]

I assume you have both Masks set the same, i.e. 255.255.255.0 and that the Gateway on the Linksys is set to 192.168.1.254.

Other than that, I'd put it down to an incompatibility problem between the different makes of equipment.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[Ploper001]

I assume you have both Masks set the same, i.e. 255.255.255.0 and that the Gateway on the Linksys is set to 192.168.1.254.

Yeah I did set those. In fact that was the revalation I had - at first I left the Gateway as 0.0.0.0, and when I realised it meant the IP of the router I thought that would be the thing to make it work, but it didn't

 

[dput]

Try setting the channels into a wider spread. My understanding is that channels that are near to each other will still clobber the signal. I generally use 1, 6, and 10.

Dan

 

[Ploper001]

I heard from Linksys that the Group Key Renewal on the Repeater should be same as the router, but the BT Home Hub has no such setting as far as I can see