Posted on 01/20/2021 2:18:53 PM PST by rapture-me
I have a home network consisting of my main router (wifiMain) and 2 additional routers connected as access points (WifiHome & WifiOffice).
Both access points are wired into the main router. However, I have the access points named with a separate name (WifiHome & WifiOffice).
When I travel to different parts of my house I have to manually connect to the one with the strongest signal.
If I name all 3 of them the same, will I stay connected without having to reconnect to the appropriate one? In other words, will I stay connected regardless of where I am in my house? Any info would be appreciated!
Although it may appear that it does since you would be using the same SSID, the wifi card in your devices are hanging on to the strongest signal until it loses it, then reconnect to the next strongest AP, causing a brief several second disruption in your network connection at best and a "split brain" situation where your adapter constantly switches between SSIDs since it cannot determine which one to stay connected to.
If you had a mesh wifi system (single router with mesh access points) then the wifi adapter in your devices is smart enough to connect preemptively to the nearest strong AP and transfer your connection to it without causing any network disruption. Routers are autonomous access points, meaning no mesh. There are many consumer and soho routers that support mesh APs, however you have to buy compatible mesh APs (almost always the same brand).
E. Pluribus Unum's link about setting up a network ten years ago...A little late to the party, I just want to reinforce that this ten year old link is 100% relevant and correct a decade later! You do not need to spend a lot of money or install software to solve this problem. It's actually defined as part of the wifi standard: you can have the same network name and password set up on multiple routers around your house.
If you have old routers lying around, this is a great way to utilize them. Make sure you understand what you are doing, though! Turning on a bunch of new wireless stuff might blow up the carefully set up wireless environment installed by your kids, etc. 😅
Old hardware can sometimes find new life with open source software. The dd-wrt project has been writing a router operating system for almost twenty years, that can be used to turn your old routers into repeaters with ease.
I have been doing this kind of stuff for a long time, happy to answer questions.
Use the same name and passwords. Put one on the lowest channel and the other things n the highest so the don’t fight each other for the channel
Yes. Use the same SSID and password for each. The additional access points will extend the wire network (WLAN) to where you place them. My house has been this way for years, including outdoors.
Office buildings and large public spaces are set up this way. Mesh WiFi is a rage now, but there is no need to dump your working access points for that if you have wire in the house.
I turned off the wireless on the network router because I’m an old fart that thinks a router should be a router and an access point should be an access point. It’s in the basement anyway, so would be rather useless as an access point.
There is a fundamental difference between a company directly collecting data about all traffic on your network, from hardware you own I might add, and that of some company sniffing outbound traffic external to your network. You might know the Devs, but I don’t, and I’m not going to have a piece of a equipment on my network that people can access externally to spy on me. Seems obvious to me, but some people don’t care about stuff like that, considering all the alexa and google and smart phone devices people ignore as security vulnerabilities.
While I think you are incorrect about VPNs (as there isn’t a mathematical solution to break 1024b end to end encryption), I do agree with you about TOR. We know the government has used compromised TOR nodes to collect evidence in some high profile cases.
You already have hardware that spies on you. I’ve been in IT at a fortune 100 company for over 20 years. You have no privacy.
I’ve been in IT since 1989, I know what devices spy on me and what doesn’t and make my decisions accordingly. If you are just willing to shrug off overt access of your devices by remote parties, that’s up to you.
And you can choose to ignore it...
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