SSID – The Droidzone Blog

If you’re using a Reliance Jio Jiofi device, you may have noticed that the range of the device is rather limited. Also the network speed is more in certain areas of the house. So if you were planning to use the laptop or your mobile phone in another part of the house, this may have irked you. Fret not. The range of the jiofi device can be boosted significantly by using one or more secondary routers instead of spending money on commercial range extender devices which often cost a big amount of money.

We will be setting up a “Repeater Bridge” to connect a jiofi device (primary router) and a TP-LINK wireless router (secondary router). My router is on dd-wrt custom firmware and I’m using a TP-LINK TL-WR740N router.
First, connect the TP-LINK router to your PC with an ethernet cable, reset the settings with a pin pressed about 20 seconds.
Now load http://192.168.1.1/

Enter a default username and password
Disconnect lan cable, and connect to jiofi wirelessly
Visit http://jiofi.local.html/ or http://192.168.1.1/. This time it will load jiofi admin page. Use the default password (see box of jiofi) to login.

Under Setting > network,
note the Host IP Address. It should be 192.168.1.1.

We’ll need to match several of the secondary router settings to that of the primary router.
So note the following details of the primary router (jiofi):
Under Setting > Wifi,
Note the following:
SSID: Primary’s SSID
802.11 Mode: Set this to 2.4 GHz (B)
Wireless Security WPA2-PSK
Wireless Encryption Type AES+TKIP
Security Key Primary’s password
Channel Mode Manual
Channel Selection 11
SSID Broadcast Enable
Wi-Fi Module Enable

Now disconnect the wifi of jiofi, and plugin the LAN cable again while connected to secondary router (TP-LINK).
Visit http://192.168.1.1/
The dd-wrt control panel should load again.

Open the Wireless -> Basic Settings tab
Physical Interface ath0 – SSID:
Wireless Mode: Client Bridge (Routed)
Wireless Network Mode: B only
Wireless Network Name SSID : Must Match Primary Router EXACTLY including case.
Wireless SSID Broadcast:Enable
SSID name: Enter the same as primary SSID.
Save settings.

Virtual Interfaces: > Add
Wireless Network Name (SSID): Same as above, i.e same as primary SSID
Wireless SSID Broadcast:Enable
Save settings.

Open Wireless -> Wireless security tab
For both physical and virtual interfaces, do the following:
Security mode: WPA2 personal
WPA algorithm: TKIP+AES
WPA Shared Key: Same as that of primary router above: Primary’s password

Open the Security -> Firewall tab
Uncheck all boxes except Filter Multicast
SPI Firewall: Disable

Open Setup -> Basic Setup tab:
Network Setup:
Router IP:
Local IP Address 192.168.1.2
Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0
Gateway 192.168.1.1
Local DNS 192.168.1.1

Now Apply Settings. If you need to, reboot your router.
If everything goes well, the range of your jiofi is now boosted. Your devices should seamlessly connect between the two routers.

Ref:
My Blog
DD-WWRT Info page

Consider this scenario. You have a modem router in the second floor of the house, whose range doesnt extend to the first floor. You have access to a low cost wireless router and would like to use it to extend the range of the router.

First, note down the wireless settings on the first router. Eg. My primary router is a Belkin N150 Wireless Modem Router F9J1001. It can configured on 192.168.2.1.

With Wifi normally connected, First login to the primary router’s settings page, and take note of the following wireless settings:
Wireless > Channel and SSID:
Wireless Channel: 11
SSID > belkin.31e
Wireless Mode > 1×1 802.11 n
Bandwidth > 20 Mhz

If any of these settings is set to auto, you need to change it to one of the other modes.

Now, access the second router’s configuration page. For me, it is a TP-LINK TL-WR740N Ver 4.27. I decided to change the stock firmware on the router to dd-wrt since the stock firmware was proving troublesome. You can try to find out where to access the same settings on your own router.

In Win 8, Control Panel > Network and internet > Network connections:
Right click on your Wifi connection and Disable it.
Enable your Ethernet connection, and connect the secondary router to your PC with an Ethernet cable.
Now Login to 192.168.0.1 (the default IP for a TP-LINK) or 192.168.1.1 (the default IP for dd-wrt) and set up the secondary router.

For dd-wrt, the settings I modified are:
Setup > Basic setup > Network setup > Router IP:
Local IP address: Change from 192.168.0.1 (default) to 192.168.2.6
Gateway: Set as your Primary router’s IP, i.e 192.168.2.1
i.e if your Primary router’s IP is 192.168.A.B, change the secondary router’s IP to 192.168.A.E leaving some amount of digits for other devices.
Assign WAN Port to Switch: Dont modify (unchecked)

Save.

Wireless > Basic Settings
Wireless Mode: Client Bridge (Routed)
Default GW Mode: Manual [Even Automatic DHCP seemed to work at least initially]
Gateway: Set as your Primary router’s IP, i.e 192.168.2.1 [If you skip this step, your secondary router may fail to renew IPs after getting disconnected once)
Wireless Network Mode: N only
Channel Width: Full (20 Mhz)
Wireless Network Name (SSID): belkin.31e (Set it to the same SSID of the primary router)

Wireless > Virtual Interfaces>
Add:
Wireless Mode: AP
Wireless Network Name (SSID): dd-wrt_vap (Autogenerated string)
Wireless SSID Broadcast: Enable
Save and Apply.

Now disconnect Ethernet, and Enable Wifi adaptor. Now you should be able to browse the internet after connecting to the secondary router via Wifi.
On dd-wrt firmware, the whole process was very straightforward.

Reference:
TP-link repeater bridge wiki (Note that there is no “repeater bridge” mode in newer firmware).
Client bridge dd-wrt Wiki

Tag Archives: SSID

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