About a year ago I bought myself a wifi extender. My house, though not large, is large enough that the router doesn't give full signal in all rooms. With this router you plug it in a socket in the same room as the main router and connect to it using either Computer, mobile or pad. It asks for your routers key. Once entered it acquires your IP address and your in. You can then move the extender to a more central location to give better coverage. The other day at work, between orders, our mobiles wouldn't connect to the normal 3g - 4g network. We are allowed to connect through the works wifi. Well on the shop floor the signal from their router is poor but manageable. I took my extender into work and plugged it in. I was able to connect to the net under my IP address. No one else could, as they didn't have my routers password. I contacted the makers of the extender and asked, If I take my extender to another place does the extender act as a mobile router and therefore connects through the nearest router. Also does it use my account or the person who's router it is. Their reply was, yes the extender will connect through any router. Once it has been paired with my main router it obtains all its details and becomes a mobile router. Any charges would be billed to my router at home and therefore no charge would be incurred by the owner of the router it was using to piggy-back its way to the net. I have unlimited internet on my router so would not be charged any more than my usual monthly tariff. So in theory if I was to go on holiday in this country I could take my extender with me and use it as a mobile router (as long as there was a main router near by to connect through (apparently this other router doesn't even have to be open or signed into, as long as it's turned on, I'm in) My mate is going to try this when he goes on holiday to south Wales in a coupe of weeks. We shall see.
Interesting but seems very strange. I can see how it would connect with a "foreign" router if it was open but not if it required a WPS password. You don't mention the make of the extender and the ISP. Again, I can see how it would allow connections to something like Fon but don't see how I could use my extender (normally connected to a Virgin Media router) with a BT router with WPS, for instance.
I'm with talktalk my works is with another service provider. Works router is wps protected but I didn't need to get their code. If I had needed that I would have been going through their provider. All I was doing was using there router for access. I was not using their provider.
Does this mean you can have a secure mobile wifi using signal on a non-secure wifi? That's brilliant! And no additional charge to your account? Even better! Green with envy!
Well as the extender acts as a mobile (as in go anywhere) router, and only those with my home router key can access it, then it is secure as in as much as others can't access my mobile or tablet (or the internet) through my mobile router without my key. The only way I've been able to remember the key is because it's written on the home router.
Th Thanks for the extra explanation. I can't think of anywhere "foreign" that I might need to use my extender but I'll keep it in mind for the future.
I live in a fairly large house and have just one room where the signal drops out regularly. It was an attached double garage which we converted into an activities room, mainly for the grandchildren. My wife and I have tended to use that room during the day over recent weeks -- it is the coolest room in the house during hot sunny days. I really like the idea of this wi-fi extender thing but had never come across it before. Without breaching any site rules, could Chimp tell us what make of wi-fi extender he has. I have just looked on the interwebby thingy and am really confused by the huge variety available. Many thanks for the post.
I have a similar model to that one. A bit fiddly to set up but works fine. You just need to check that it is compatible with the signal(s) sent by your router.
Thinking about it, the problem I had was after Virgin changed our router. I tried to pair the extender from its normal location instead of taking it to the room where the router is. I recall a wireless printer got confused because the new router puts out its signal differently and the device is expected to decide between 5G and 2.4G (rather than their being separate access points). I can't recall now if the extender suffered similar confusion.
