Wireless networking help - Range extender question

[Gr44]

Hey guys,

Hope you've all had a top new years!!

Quickie for you, I have a belkin ADSL wireless router, works fine. Unfourtunatley it doesnt cover the whole of our house as its very long and not very wide, also we have a 3 foot wall of bricks in the middle which doesnt help!!

So we have brought a range extender, I have put the ADSL routers MAC address into the table of to use that as the access point, and put the mac address in from the AP to ADSL router, I set the SSID and Channel to the same as the ADSL router, but it doesnt appear to do anything....? I'm confused, unless I've missed something really obvious!!
only thing that springs to mind is maybe I need the SSID & channel to be differant?

any help would be great, cheers chaps.

Oh also, on a side note - do you guys think a sony viao 2.6ghz p4-m laptop with 512mb ram, 16" monitor, dvdrw, radeon 9000 on board gfx card for 300 quid is a good deal? ( 1 year old )

[GDVS]

Are they detecting one another on a site survey?

As a side note, if I were not so mindful of the law I'd suggest anyone going this route to get a WRT54G (v1-4) and flash the firmware to one that supports TX power changes. I have of course never tried this and don't use one as a wireless bridge through a thick brick wall and neither have I seen network stability increase dramatically nor have I seen increased connection speeds.

As for the laptop: Hell yes, rip his/her hand off

[Gr44]

TX... power... you say? hmmm *ears twig* I er mean no, of course I would never do anything like... *googles*

anyhow, Site survey? Sorry I'm not very up on wireless stuff... I'm OK if it has wires!! but I'm lost with this stuff

I thought the laptop was a good deal, I told him I would take it It's quite big but that doesn't bother me... poor credit cards are going to get a thrashing... car service is tomorrow and insurance due next month MOT just ran out too lol

[GDVS]

I'm not familiar with the firmware on the Belkin routers but (probably under the wireless status screen) there should be a "Survey" (or similar) option that will show you all wireless networks within range. Possibly with a "Join" button too.

Google tells me the firmware scene on Belkin routers is pretty much non-existant although I know DD-WRT is slated to get support for at least some Belkin routers in v24.

[Gr44]

Hm, I can't see anything like that on the router. nothing about finding wireless networks... only thing vaugely close is the DHCP list but thats way off....

*scratches head*

[GDVS]

Sorry man, without knowing the kit I can't really help much

[Gr44]

No problem buddy, thanks for you're help.

Quickie though, should the SSID and channel be the same for both the router and the access point do you know?

[GDVS]

Yes, as should the security settings (WPA/WEP,AES/TKIP etc).

[chud]

Ranger extenders use WDS, so if you router doesnt support WDS, or you haven't set it up correctly, it wont do anything.

[Dr. X]

search for a tool called netstumbler, which can do a site-survey or look for wireless networks in your area.