Setting up a new router

[Rod at home 2]

I've got a 4 year old Netgear router. It works fine, but there's some features it doesn't have, that I wish it did. Recently I had my birthday, and for my birthday my family allowed me to get a new router. I've gotten another Netgear router. (Hey, they've worked fine for me, so why change at this point. YMMV.) It's a Netgear Nighthawk router. I figure it will take some time, most likely more than I plan for (you know how that goes), but I'm looking forward to it.

 

My network consists of Windows 7 and Windows 7 machines, a couple of Roku's, 2 smart phones with Wi-Fi and other assorted Wi-Fi appliances. I'm wondering if, in order to transition to the new router faster, if I could just use the same SSID and passphrase for the new router?

[dvn 15]

You can. I just did it yesterday with my new Nighthawk. Printer, smartphones, Apple TV, and Chromecast all connected automatically.

[Rod at home 2]

Sweet, dvn, glad to hear it!

[GavinCampbell 18]

If you setup the same ssid and passcode on both and put them on either end of your house your devices would roam from one to the other seemlessly.  This could allow you to get a better signal on the other side of the house if its week and you can use the old router for something still. 

 

Just a suggestion.

[jmwills 284]

Wait, you're going to use two wireless routers in the same house?  Why?  I'd turn the old one into an Access Point using the same SSID and security.  Just make sure the AP is one a different channel and then you can roam from one signal to the other.

 

Of course, this assumes you have a wired connection to connect to the LAN port on the AP.

[Rod at home 2]

You and Gavin's suggestions really intrigue me. However, before I get into it, what do you mean by an Access Point, Gavin, and how is that different from using the older Netgear router as a router? My house isn't that large, but the router currently is at one end of the house and sometimes the signal is weak at the other end.

[jmwills 284]

You can turn the old router into a AP by disabling DHCP on it.

[Rod at home 2]

So, how would the old router get the signal from the new router? Does it still receive it wirelessly?

[gtechwi 6]

Rod, I do this with my netgear routers. The main one is connected to the internet connection in my garage. The other one is a wireless access point in my house.

 

does your Netgear router have "wireless repeating function" in the advanced menu? this is built in and works great.

 

http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/24108/~/how-do-i-configure-my-nighthawk-r7000-router-as-a-wireless-repeater%3F

 

 

set up base router like this as a base station:

 

 

 

 

 

and repeater router like this as a wireless repeater:

 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

[ikon 439]

Check your throughput if you decide to enable the repeating function: you may find it has been cut in half.

 

Following on from jmwills post, the main thing about turning a router into an AP is to NOT use the WAN port on the router. It's really that simple. If you don't connect anything to the WAN port, then nothing goes through the router circuitry inside the unit, but you can still use the wireless circuitry, as well as the intergrated Ethernet switch. Disabling the DHCP function is really a good idea too, because you don't want more than 1 DHCP server on your network.