Will a wireless range extender act as a wireless switch?

Question

I installed cate 5e cables and jacks just in my basement. Because I installed my coaxial Internet cable in the basement on the north side of the house and my bedroom (which connects wirelessly) is on the third story on the south side of the house, I had to connect a second router to my cat5e jack, which is more in the middle of the basement, to get signal strength. The problem is, the computers down in the den, in the same room where the coaxial cable jack for the Internet is, can not communicate with the computers hooked up to the wireless router. This includes computers that are actually connected wirelessly or hard wired to the computer. I have gotten this to work by entering a static route, but now I'm just thinking about getting a wireless switch. Are the range extenders just basically switches? If so, that would fix the problem because my network would be one broadcast domain.

Computers on the 192.168.1.0/24 network can not communicate with computers on the 192.168.2.0/24 network. But I can configure the 192.168.1.1 router from the 192.168.2.0 network and get on the Internet. Traffic will just not flow the other direction. That's why I'm thinking about getting a wireless device that is a switch.

Answer 1

You have created a multi-domain environment. To answer your question specifically, yes, Wireless AP's are essentially switches. I would recommend 1 router and then use access points throughout your home to increase signal strength, and decrease latency and complexity on your network.

Answer 2

What you need is something called a Wireless Access Point, and don't configure it be anything but a wireless access point, or turn your second router into a wireless access point.

Run the entire network on one subnet 192.168.1.x.

You could likely do the whole house with a single wireless router if you just moved it out of the basement.

My house is similar, I have a New England Colonial style house. The cable comes into the basement, there is a wired router there. Ethernet (cat5) runs from the router to a middle 2rd floor bedroom. I have a "dumb" wireless access point there. (linksys wap11). I have strong wireless signal all through the house. Currently sitting in 1st floor den typing this.

You communication problem is likely an IP routing problem. Turning on RIP in your 2 routers might solve the problem.