Looking for strong WIFI repeater

[Khenglish]

The dorms across the street from my apartment just got their wifi upgraded, and I would love to ditch TWC in favor of the far faster and far far far far more reliable college wifi that my tuition already pays for. My  laptop can reach it, but unfortunately due to the range the wifi does occasionally get dropped (although better than the TWC drop rate), and phones get far too weak of a signal to use the wifi at all.

 

I was wondering if there was a wifi repeater with very good range that could rebroadcast the college wifi within the apartment. The idea is I use the repeater to log in to the wifi, and then the repeater rebroadcasts with a new name and password that us in the apartment can log in to. Unfortunately every wifi repeater I find will only broadcast a unique wifi name and password if it receives an ethernet connection, not a wifi connection. We cannot rebroadcast as the same network as that will let too many people be able to log in and network admins would likely be mad at me. Is there a repeater than will take and rebroadcast a wifi under a different name with range as good as a laptop?

 

Unfortunately TWC has a monopoly in my area, so grabbing the college wifi is the only way to get decent internet.

[long2905]

i used this one a year ago and it allows you to set up a custom wifi name to anything you like:

http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-10_TL-WA850RE.html

[StiflersM0M]

On 22.8.2016 at 8:09 AM, Khenglish said:

The dorms across the street from my apartment just got their wifi upgraded, and I would love to ditch TWC in favor of the far faster and far far far far more reliable college wifi that my tuition already pays for. My  laptop can reach it, but unfortunately due to the range the wifi does occasionally get dropped (although better than the TWC drop rate), and phones get far too weak of a signal to use the wifi at all.

 

I was wondering if there was a wifi repeater with very good range that could rebroadcast the college wifi within the apartment. The idea is I use the repeater to log in to the wifi, and then the repeater rebroadcasts with a new name and password that us in the apartment can log in to. Unfortunately every wifi repeater I find will only broadcast a unique wifi name and password if it receives an ethernet connection, not a wifi connection. We cannot rebroadcast as the same network as that will let too many people be able to log in and network admins would likely be mad at me. Is there a repeater than will take and rebroadcast a wifi under a different name with range as good as a laptop?

 

Unfortunately TWC has a monopoly in my area, so grabbing the college wifi is the only way to get decent internet.

I dont think that your idea will work, at least not with a common extender.

If even the notebook only get a weak signal where the connection occasionally drops a normal repeater wich you normally plug into the socket maybe dont even find the wifi like you phone. (Usually a notebook got much bigger and better antennae as a small repeater).

 

And even if you get a weak signal with a repeater, the connections will  likley also drop like it is on your notebook, dependig on the environmental influences.

 

I would look for repeater with external antennae like the TPLINK RE580D they should got much more power then the small extenders you just plug into the a socket.

 

If even this is not enough, i would try to replace the sending and the reciving antenna with directional antennae (if this is possible for you).

 

[Khenglish]

The repeater would have done on the back porch with direct line of sight to the dorm building, avoiding the walls in the apartment that the signal passes through for the laptop.

 

I decided to change apartments though for other reasons, so not bothering with an extender.

[tramp]

Despite the fact that this has resolved itself in the traditional manner (http://dilbert.com/strip/1997-11-06), here is my 2 cents...

 

Rather than a traditional extender, you could set your wifi device as a bridge. If you still need wifi in the apartment, hang another AP from that. In my experience, this eases some of the issues related to trying to use an extender at extreme range.  If you have access to an ethernet port on the source side, you can use a pair of directional devices for the bridge (like the Ubiquiti NanoStation line) to extend range to many times the traditional max.  At my last job, I successfully used a pair of nanostations to bridge a gap of nearly a mile (with rough, but not clean line of sight).

Edited November 16, 2016 by tramp