Extending a wireless network

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hello,

Long time MT user, but I’ve been out of the loop for many years now.

I’m currently running an RB4011 as my main router, simple setup, all the LAN ports including the 2 wireless interfaces are bundled into the bridge, with an IP address configured for the bridge (10.1.1.1/24).

I wanted the wireless network to cover my garden area, as I spend a lot of time outside. There is a shed outside, with power, and I can get a good connection from there to the house wirelessly, but in the garden it drops off significantly.

I can place another router in my shed (I have a spare hAP lite), which can wirelessly connect to the main router (I can’t get an ethernet cable out there, although I could run ethernet over power but it’s not very reliable as it’s on different power circuits).

What would be the easiest simplest way to extend this wireless network/s? (RB4011 has 2 interfaces).

I was thinking of something along the lines of:

Main router > wireless > shed hAP lite > wireless connectivity in the garden.

I’m sure there is many ways to do it, any suggestions, guides, would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

2

Your problem with the hAP lite is that you are expecting it to do both the backhaul and the primary Access Point function, which I think would mean that you would have to split 5Ghz and 2 GHz to the different functions. It looks like you need to look for a point to point solution to add to this setup.

3

The hap lite has only one radio, at 2.4 GHz.

If you use that as "extender" or "repeater" it will be half of the time AP (spreading wi-fi around) and half of the time "station" (client connecting wirelsssly to the RB4011 in the house).

And it is not a particularly powerful device, so it all depends on the speed you expect.

If you are happy with the speed that you can achieve on a laptop connected via Ethernet to the hap lite placed in the garden shed, for what it costs[1], I would get another device to act as "station" and have the hap lite be a pure AP connected to it.

[1] the el-cheapest suitable device would be:
https://mikrotik.com/product/sxtsq_lite2
list price 39 US$