topic Re: How to use a second Smart router as an EE WiFi booster in Broadband & Landline

How to use a second Smart router as an EE WiFi booster

jamesdimonaco — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 20:27:58 GMT

I have an EE Smart router aswell as an EE disk and they work really well together creating a mesh network. I want to add to this network with another EE Smart router.

I've been following some tutorials online with yet no success that's why i'm coming here for help.

Something to note my EE smart booster disk jumps between connecting with my main router and the second one when testing.

Any help with config here would be greatly appreciate

Re: How to use a second Smart router as an EE WiFi booster

Mustrum — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 20:39:54 GMT

@jamesdimonaco the question has been asked many times, and this guide from @XRaySpeX shows the steps needed. It uses a Brightbox, but the steps are the same:

I have a BB1 currently acting as a WAP as an experiment & it works. Here's how for all types of Brightbox:

1st connect the Secondary BB individually to your PC to do these 1st 6 steps below.
Set Broadband Type of Secondary BB = Fibre/Ethernet for a BB1 or Ethernet for a BB2 (untick the "Enable ADSL/Fibre auto sensing" 1st), under Basic Settings.
Set Protocol of Secondary BB = Bridging, under Basic Settings.
Set the Gateway IP Addy of the Secondary BB, under DHCP, to be diff from that of Primary BB but on same subnet, e.g. if Primary BB's is 192.168.1.1, make the Secondary BB's 192.168.1.2.
Disable DHCP on Secondary BB.
Disable NAT on Secondary BB.
Make the Wireless SSID & pwd of Secondary BB to be same as Primary BB (or you can play around with a separate WLAN).
Connect Primary BB LAN port to Secondary BB WAN port by Ethernet cable or PowerLines, as suggested in other reply.
Reserve the Secondary BB's Gateway IP Addy in the DHCP of the Primary BB.
You should not need to make any other changes to the Primary BB.

If you ever need to reconfigure the Secondary BB, you may find that you cannot access it from http://192.168.1.2/ as it objects to "Duplicate Administrator" In which case you will need to again connect the Secondary BB individually to your PC to administer it.

f you think I helped please feel free to hit the "Thumbs Up" button below.

Re: How to use a second Smart router as an EE WiFi booster

XRaySpeX — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 21:22:32 GMT

You can't set an EE Smart Router into "Bridging" mode like the BrightBox. Rather that try mimicking To make a 2nd Brightbox as a Routing WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox
To stop the smart disk jumping between connecting with the main router and the second one make their SSIDs different. Then it'll stay on the same 1 once it 1st connects.

Re: How to use a second Smart router as an EE WiFi booster

Mustrum — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 21:25:52 GMT

Thanks @XRaySpeX , I posted the wrong example, knew you had done it somewher..