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Got a crappy Wi-Fi signal? You might be wondering, why can't you just add a second router to your

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network and get twice the coverage? It turns out you actually can, although it takes a little

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bit of effort and there are some caveats that you should be aware of. Before we dive in, we'd like

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to thank our good friend Joel Crane for helping us out with this walkthrough. Step zero, it's

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actually important to know what your typical Wi-Fi router does. It not only emits a Wi-Fi signal,

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it's also responsible for moving traffic between the internet and your home,

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which is the actual routing part, as well as ensuring that the right traffic goes to the

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right device. So a video you're trying to watch on your phone in bed won't instead get sent to

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your TV in the living room. This job of sending data to the correct place is typically handled by a

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feature in your router called the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, or DHCP. How DHCP does

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this is by assigning every gadget on your home network a private IP address, usually starting

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with 192.168.something. But why do you need to know this in order to add a second router? Well,

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regardless of exactly how many routers you have, only one of them should have DHCP turned on. If

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more than one router tries to assign private IP addresses, they'll often end up conflicting

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with each other and assigning different addresses to the same device, which can cause all kinds of

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errors when that device tries to communicate. So how do you ensure that this does not happen?

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Start by hooking up your second router to a PC with an Ethernet cable. Just use one of the

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LAN ports and manually assign it an IP address in your router settings. Make sure it is not

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something that's already being used by another device in your network. You can check by going to

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your primary router setting page and looking for a list of connected devices or clients. Just pick

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an address that is not on this list. For example, if your primary router is using 192.168.1.1, try

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giving the second router an address of 192.168.1.2 if nothing else is using that. Reboot your second

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router and once it's back up, go back into the settings and disable DHCP, leaving it enabled

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only on the one router that's actually connected to your modem. Some routers call this AP mode,

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where AP stands for access point. Essentially, you're telling that second router just to emit

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a Wi-Fi signal while leaving all the actual routing to the primary router. After you've done this,

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connect your primary and secondary routers via their LAN ports. Not the LAN port, very important,

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not that one. And configure the second router to use the same network name, or SSID, and password

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as your existing Wi-Fi network. That way, any devices in your home should roam between the two

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routers, locking on to which everyone has the best signal. But for that to work, the physical

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placement of these routers needs to make sense. Put your second router somewhere far enough away

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so there isn't a bunch of signal overlap, which you can roughly measure with the smartphone

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signal strength app. But not so far away that you're leaving a big dead zone in between them.

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You want a healthy Venn diagram. This process can obviously involve some trial and error,

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and to make matters more complicated, many smart devices are quite stupid in the sense

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that they'll stay connected to a weak access point for longer than they really should. If you're

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finding that this is the case when using a second router, you might just want to name it

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something different and just connect to it manually. Of course, if this all just sounds

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like a huge pain, it is a bit easier just to get a mesh networking kit off the shelf if you need

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better Wi-Fi coverage. But if you really do want to use that second router you just have laying

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around anyway, this guide should at the very least be strapping a clothes hanger wrapped in tin foil

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to your phone. We all have our embarrassing past. So thanks for watching guys. If you liked this

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video, hit like, hit subscribe, and hit us up in the comments section with your ideas for topics

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that we should cover in the future.