computer hell
Materials:
- Dell x200 laptop equipped with a Linksys WPC54G 802.11g wireless adapter
- 2Wire 2700HG b/g access point
- Linksys WRE54G Wireless-G Range Expander
Objective:
Get Aricka's wireless signal from the upper/front/left of our 8-unit building to be available within lower/back/right dwelling. The access point does not have this kind of range on its own. The Range Expander's point is to catch the wireless signal from the edge of its abilities and "repeat" it as though it is the actual access point.
Established:
- Laptop gets 100% signal from 2wire access point in Aricka's apartment
- Laptop gets 30-50% signal from outside my kitchen door.
- Laptop gets 0% signal from within my apartment
- Range Expander detects signal from access point within Aricka's apartment
- Range Expander detects signal when mounted outside my kitchen door
- Range Expander apes the name and settings from access point, but uses a different MAC setting.
- Linksys wireless detection tool shows both the access point and range expander in available network list
- Windows wireless detection tool shows one but does not show both (assuming it suppresses duplicate names).
- neither wireless detection tool makes any implication which device it's actually picking up.
- Laptop detects Range Expander @ 80-88% from within my apartment, but it does not actually replicate the internet signal.
- Range Expander setup software attempts to change my wireless card's TCP/IP settings to some strange IP, then states that the expander is unavailable and renders the network card useless until I change the TCP/IP settings back to "auto-detect".
thus, the vicious circle goes.
So after a week's worth of trial and error, and a lot of plugging/unplugging/moving, the range expander stopped grabbing or broadcasting any signal whatsoever. The pinhole factory reset button on the device did nothing, so after numerous tries to make it work, I made the decision to return the thing to Circuit Shitty because $100 is too much to pay for a futuristic-looking paperweight with really bright LEDs. And it's not heavy enough to be a paperweight either.
So I am back to square one.