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Resolved Question

Looking to extend guest and private wifi

May 9, 2015 5:32AM PDT

Helping friend with his new 3,500 square foot house. Want to be able to roam house on private Wi-Fi, but give visitors guest access as well.

Netgear just told me that all of their wifi extenders can only extend one wifi signal and they have a 2 extender recommended limit. This may barely work, but don't want to be limited to extending 1 wifi network per device.

What product(s) would you recommend to cover the home with 2 wifi networks?

Discussion is locked

techyguy717 has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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My usual fix.
May 9, 2015 5:52AM PDT

I install routers as WAPs (how is on the web) then each WAP has it's own zone and configured as need be. There are some systems like Ubiquiti, Cisco and others that are for large companies that address this but for home users I use more than one WAP to solve this. I never deploy extenders because they are usually trouble.
Bob

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Expensive or low security?
May 9, 2015 6:49AM PDT

R. Proffitt.

I have done this before. Unless things have changed, I will need to extend cat 5/6 cable for a true AP. That would be an expensive cabling job, that would be rejected.

I have used repeaters before, but only 1 repeater for 1 wifi SSID network. In fact, the media link repeaters I setup are still functioning 4 years later, streaming Netflix, but only with WEP security. There has to be better technology nowadays, that can extend 2 or more networks at the same time using WPA2 security.

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Or you use powerline networking.
May 9, 2015 6:55AM PDT
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This is a good article.
May 9, 2015 6:59AM PDT
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Power Surge
May 11, 2015 1:30AM PDT

Thank you R. Proffitt,

Are you familiar with a wall surge protector to keep the powerline adaptors from failing? Many surge protectors block the powerline signal, or severely hamper connectivity. We get many lightning storms around here during the summer, "coming soon" and many powerline adaptors will fail.

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No. Here's why.
May 11, 2015 1:40AM PDT

I haven't had one fail yet. If you are seeing surges then all the gear in the house is going to fail since the models I used were good from 90 to 240 VAC. Since this is a 110 VAC main, you can imagine lights popping before these fail.
Bob

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Wow
May 11, 2015 1:03PM PDT

Interesting, I did not know that some Powerlines were created to withstand so much excess voltage.

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Example. So many out there.
May 11, 2015 11:59PM PDT