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How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection!
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How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection!

by Aiphos HooNovember 2, 2021
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Eliminate WiFi signal blind spot and speed up internet!

How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 33

Ever since I discovered WiFi routers exist, I have not used LAN connections. But WiFi does have its downsides, and it’s quite common to hear about people complaining about bad WiFi coverage, or that they have a good internet connection but poor speeds in certain areas of their homes. Here’s a guide on how to convert your old ASUS router into a WiFi repeater.

But hey, here’s a little context to the story first. I don’t usually work from home, but as you may know, the recent restricted movement order (RMO) has forced me to set up a makeshift office at home. The router is located downstairs, in the living room. And my office is on the upper floor. With multiple walls and other objects in between, I am getting really poor WiFi reception where I am working. There’s also a toilet in between, with the reflective tiles further worsening the reception in my makeshift office.

Materials that will weaken WiFi signal

There are several materials that would weaken WiFi signal lies in your house, these are generally materials with reflective surfaces such as metals, or also objects like mirror or water (that’s why your phone signal drops in toilet).

You can read more about WiFi weakening materials from here and here.

ASUS RT-N800HP

How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 37

The ASUS RT-N800HP, is a dual processor router with four high-gain antennas, which rank among one of the best routers back then. but it has been collecting dust in a box in my collection until a few days ago.

Note: If you are using a different router make or model than this, you would need to look for Wireless Distribution System (WDS) feature on your router. If your router does not have WDS, you will not be able to convert it into a repeater. Even some high-end routers might not have WDS and more often than not, it is actually the network chip’s limitation rather than the firmware.

Video Guide

Setting up

If you are new to setting up your home network, well, a repeater basically does exactly what its name implies. It repeats the signal, extending the effective range of your signal.

How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 38

  1. To set it up with an ASUS router like the RT-N800HP, the process is really quite simple, as all you need to do is plug in your router, connect your router to a laptop, and you will be brought to a setup wizard.How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 39
  2. Create a login to the router. Remember this so you can change settings in the future.How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 40
  3. Then in the next page, you will need to select the mode you want the router to run in and of course, select Repeater mode here.How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 41
  4. Then, select and login to the WiFi network in your home and the router will attempt to login to the network.How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 42
  5. Once connected, the wizard will show the LAN settings, which is something you might wanna take note of if you want to assign a specific IP address to your repeater or use a different DNS server.How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 43
  6. And here you will have to assign a different SSID and password to the repeater’s network. The repeater will appear as a discrete access point, which you can then connect to from your device.How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 44
  7. With all that done, all you need to do is sit back and give the router some time to complete the setup.How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 45

Result

As you can see, with the addition of the RT-N800HP as a repeater, the performance of the network in my office area has been greatly improved.

How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 46

With SpeedTest.com, We got from an unstable download speed that unable to be detected improve to a respectable 3.44 Mbps.

 

How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 47

And in Fast.com which test for video streaming speed, we got from a pitiable 70kbps to a good 16Mbps.

Conclusion

Now this is a very simple way to widen your coverage with an old ASUS router, or generally most decent routers in the market right now. A more modern and seamless solution would be ASUS’ AiMesh technology, where you will have the entire network appearing as a single network, instead of separate access points (APs). That also means you can walk around through out the area within the coverage of your mesh network, without having to connect and disconnect between APs as you move between the coverage zones. It’s clearly the better solution, although you will require a more recent router than the RT-N800HP.

How to convert your old ASUS router into a repeater! Eliminate WiFi blind spots and speed up your connection! 48

So there you have it, a simple way to make use of older networking hardware you have lying around to expand the WiFi coverage at home. Did this solve your issues with your home network? If we did, do give us a thumbs up, and if it didn’t, do leave a comment below and we will see if we can help you solve your network issues.

About The Author
Aiphos Hoo
I love entry range product, i make it a point to squeeze every single performance out of my hardware which is also how my first ever CPU died XD! LOW SPEC GAMING FOREVER!
1 Comments
  • Rommel
    January 23, 2023 at 4:34 am

    hola tengo un router asus modelo RT-AC1200_V2 pero no trae el modo repetidor si la opcion WDS pero como se debe configurar para que se utilize como repetidor gracias por su ayuda

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