Have you ever been in a situation where your Wi-Fi doesn't reach far enough and you can't
run a cable? You could buy a repeater or another mesh node, but those things cost money.
Fortunately, you actually might be in luck if you or a friend has an old router lying around,
like this one. This is actually a new router, but many modern wireless routers, even cheaper ones,
have a feature called Wireless Distribution System or WDS. This essentially allows you to disable
the features you're not using and deploy the router as a repeater, with the added advantage
of giving you access to the wired Ethernet ports on the back of those babies. You can think of it
kind of like running an Ethernet cable, but wirelessly. So how do you set it up? Although
there's usually a simple on-off option for WDS in your router settings, it's wise to do a little
bit of configuration work as well in order to ensure it works properly. Start by manually setting
both your main wireless network and the secondary router to the same channel so they can communicate.
To keep the connection stable, you'll want to give your secondary router a static internal IP
address. But how do you do that? Well, on a home network, every connected device is assigned a
private IP address that typically starts with 192.168. This system ensures any incoming data
is sent to the correct device. Usually, your router assigns these addresses automatically
through a system called DHCP. But for WDS, you'll want to give your secondary router
one IP address it hangs on to permanently, instead of having your main router automatically
give it a new one periodically, which can cause connection problems. Log into your main router
and find the place in the settings that will show you a list of all the connected clients.
Then go back to your secondary router and give it an IP address in the LAN settings
that isn't currently being used by any of those devices. Make sure you start it with 192.168.0
or 1 depending on which one your network uses and using a fourth number that's between 1 and 255.
You can also set the second router's static IP within the first router's DHCP settings by
finding the second router's Mac Address and putting it in there. After you do this, go ahead and turn
on WDS. You'll get a prompt asking which wireless network you want to connect to. So pick the right
one and punch in the password. Make sure, by the way, that you turn off the DHCP feature on the
secondary router. Your primary router will handle assigning internal IP addresses and having two
devices on the same network handling DHCP functions, oh that can cause some pretty bizarre
problems. Get flashbacks. From here, you're all set to use your secondary router. If you're trying
to connect a wired device, just plug in the Ethernet cable to one of the LAN ports. Not the WAN port,
the LAN ports. If you're trying to connect wirelessly instead, punch in the credentials that
your secondary router is using to connect directly to it. Although you can also give your secondary
router the same login information as the primary one to have your Wi-Fi devices switch automatically
between them. But wait, there's a big caveat with using WDS. Because Wi-Fi is a half-duplex protocol
that can't send and receive at the same time, WDS tends to be slower than using a single router.
In fact, if you're connected to the secondary router wirelessly, your speeds will be roughly cut
in half. Also, keep in mind that you may not want to assign both routers the same login information,
as client devices tend to hang on to the first access point they can connect to for dear life.
So your phone, for example, may not switch back to the primary router the way you would like to
once it's in range. But while WDS isn't perfect, it's a great way to repurpose an old router if
you don't need the highest possible speeds and can be a lifesaver if you have a wired-only device
you really need to use. Unless you don't mind tripping over the 100-foot Ethernet cable you've
snaked all through your house. It's an aesthetic. Dystopian cyberpunk. Cables everywhere. Wow,
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