Finally a Wireless Range Extender which is as nice as cheap and easy to configure!
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My wifi router is on the first floor and wifi connections from both the ground floor and the second floor are really poor due to the large concrete slab between each floor.
I didn’t want to pay (a lot) for a new wifi routers which would offer much more features than actually required, have useless Ethernet ports (switch), be large and ugly/inappropriate in the landscape, …
So, I decided to give a try to the nice and discrete TL-WA850RE sold for 38€.
The connection with my Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH was straightforward and went seamlessly.
- Plug the TL-WA850RE in a electrical outlet close to the wifi router to be extended
- On a laptop, open the pane to select a Wifi Network and pick the “TP-LINK_Extender_xxxxxx network”
- Start a browser and navigate to “http://tplinkextender.net”. It’s the url of the embedded administration website.
- Log in using the username ‘admin’ and password ‘admin’
- Follow the wizard to configure the TP-LINK Range Extender as described in the Quick Installation Guide. PAY ATTENTION: you have to disable your popup blocker or allow that website. Otherwise, the final status windows will be blocked and the process won’t complete.
- Once the wizard completed, go to the router configuration website and look for the IP assigned to the TP-Link device (on the WOL page of my Buffalo, I found it’s IP for the hostname = *). The best would be to assign a fix IP to the TP-Link’s Mac Address!
- Restart a Browser and navigate to the TP-Link’s IP address.
- Back to the TP-Link administration website, change the default username/password via System Tools > Password.
- Now, the device can be unplugged and moved into a electrical outlet of a room where the wifi signal is currently poor.
There is a DHCP server embedded in the device as well as some other basic wireless features (relate to security, statistics…) that I won’t use as far as everything is managed by/on my Buffalo.
So far, the TP-Link works really well to extend the range of my Buffalo 🙂
The only “issue” is the blue leds shining too much in the dark which prevent me to sleep in my room if I use the repeater there 🙁
TP-Link: http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?model=TL-WA850RE
