Extending Fios G3100 with Airport Extreme

[DCBass]

Hi All,

Long story short, I recently moved into a neighborhood with Fios and quickly switched away from comcast. Good riddance.

Unfortunately, I had to have the fios router and included G3100 wifi6 wireless router installed in the basement. Coverage is pretty good, but there are a couple of corners in the house with weak signal.

I also have an old Airport Extreme base station (3rd gen? the one that looks like an old mac mini, not the tower-shaped one). Is there a way to use my airport extreme to extend the signal from the Fios wireless router? I'd prefer not to buy verizon's extender and just use what I already have if possible.

Thank you from a networking noob!

 

[Ghokun]

If you have a cable connect it with cable first so it can get an IP from your router. Open airport utility from mac/windows/iphone
Airport Utility > Edit airport station > Wireless tab > Network mode : Extend a wireless network. Enter your wireless username/password. > Update. After that you can disconnect network cable and put it anywhere that has good connectivity. However if you can hook up a cable it works better.

 

[DCBass]

Thanks, Ghokun. I appreciate the feedback. However, in trying it now, I am getting an error message in airport utility that says:

"This AirPort base station was unable to extend the wireless network Make sure the wireless network you're trying to extend was set up and is working correctly, that you entered a matching wireless network password into this device, and that this device is in range of the wireless network."

I've tried your recommended process a few times, and have satisfied all the suggestions from the error message. I've also restarted the base station a couple of times, but to no avail.

Perhaps I do not have the G3100 configured correctly? I've gone through the settings in myfiosgateway and do not see any obvious settings to change.

 

[techwarrior]

Extending with Airport is generally frowned upon. But, creating a Wireless Network with the same SSID and password as the main network, using ethernet to connect the Extreme to the router could be useful.

Airports share the wireless radio with client and uplink connections. If placed in an area with less than optimal signal strength from the router, it will be a miserable experience. Apple generally recommends wiring the satellite devices to the main router.

If ethernet to the remote area is challenging, consider MOCA (uses existing Coax cable in the home) or Powerline (uses electrical wiring in the home) adapters. I have had good success with Powerline, TPLink AV2000 units will generally give you 1Gbps speeds over the power line.

If you go this route, Network Mode is Off (Bridged Mode) and Wireless is "Create a Wireless Network". You can use the same SSID and Password as the main WiFi network, or you can make it different. You may find making it different better because some devices will switch randomly between access points if signal strength is nearly equal and fluctuates. But, it the only network it knows is good enough, it will cling to it to the end.

 

[Velin]

Definitely use Ethernet over powerline. Get a pair or several TPLink adapters, and make sure the remote units have WiFi capability. Then stick them where your signal is weakest. They work great. You can plug into the remote unit’s Ethernet plug, or use the WiFi signal, and this allows you to select the appropriate WiFi signal, instead of janky “mesh” systems.

One caveat: don’t plug into GFCI outlets, these cause problems.