h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

so I have a spiffy new fibre optic internet connection.
Which they have installed by my front door which is on the ground floor. Our living room is on the 1st floor and the bedrooms on the 2nd floor.

The WiFi connection between our phones/laptops etc and the router isn't brilliant and annoyingly slow (as slow as before) Even though apparently we have 60mb (or whatever it is) in each direction on our connection (compared with 3mb from our old one)

I guess the slow loading of pages etc could be solved by using a WiFi booster, so I have one. A Devolo 500 with one base thing and 2 booster things (sorry, trying to translate from the German)

So the base thing gets connected with a LAN cable to the router, and then the 2 booster things plug in (one on each floor) and apparently by the touch of a button boost the WiFi signal.

so far so good.

Only I can't get anything to connect to what appears to be the boosters. It keeps asking for a wifi "key" but I have a WPA key (aka password - which I changed when we installed it 2 weeks ago) and a WPS pin.

Up to now the notebook PCs have needed the WPS pin to connect, and all other phones/pads etc have needed my new password.

But now nothing works with anything and I'm still connected to the router directly rather than the WiFi boosters.

Any ideas?

and don't ask me technical stuff. This is supposed to be plug and go. So it shouldn't take hours and hours and hours...

Plug and go my bottom.

I just spent the whole of last night trying to fix the client's wi-fi (annoyingly as soon as I handed over to someone else they fixed it immediately)

The best source is generally Google for these things, but it helps to develop a pessimistic attitude to this mumbo jumbo wireless stuff. I still don't even trust transistor radios - it's all powered by the devil.

I tried using WiFi boosters in the past and found them not worth the trouble. My experience was that while they might boost the signal strength, they did so at the cost of speed.

What I ended up doing was installing a second router. It wasn't easy, but most of the trouble I had was due to a cable issue. I must have kinked and broke a couple of the wires in the ethernet cable running to my second router. It still showed a connection to the modem, but wouldn't connect to the internet/network. Once I figured that out (after about a week of tearing my hair out) it went pretty much as advertised.

So, my advice is to toss the boosters and install a second router if you can run the cable.

I have to admit that I don't really understand my wifi, even though I have five separate wifi networks in the house. It just about all works and that's good enough for me.

As far as I remember, when I started the booster first, I had to connect to it from the pc and tell it what key it was to use. I told it same key as the wifi network iy was extending. But yhat doesn't sound like yours at all.

so the instructions are, connect the first part to the router via cable. I already had to buy a 6m cable to do that which is annoying. Then you plug in the first booster, wait until it lights up, press a button, run back to the first part and press a button on that...
then you plug in the 2nd one (I live on 3 floors so I need 2 booster jobbies) wait for a light on that, run back to the 2nd one and press a button, run back to the 3rd one and press a button.
Then log in with your WiFi Password.

Only (and I discovered this when the router was installed) you need some PIN for the laptops, but a password for the phones/tablets. No problem I have those. Plus we then changed the name of the router and the password (my #2 insisted that our WiFi is called Hogwarts)

So I did all that. And I can see the Devolo thing in the list of available wifi. But it won't accept either my new password or my original password on mobile devices or the PIN on the notebook.

I can't tell, because all lights are on but there is no other indication of anything, if anything is actually connected to anything important.

So - if I use another router - where should that go? and I guess I have to connect it with cable to my router. Which is about 25metres of the stuff and impossible. But in theory, how should that work?

What do you mean by "then log in with your wifi password"?

What device were you typing into? Did a "please log in screen appear on it or did you start up a browser and go to some special address?

no - when it's set up,as I understand it, instead of connecting directly to the router, I have to connect to the device that is plugged into the router using the router's password.

and that's what is asking for either a PIN or a password.

But it won't accept any of them and I'm in danger of stamping on them in my hobnail boots.

The Devolo won't use the same password as your router. You may have to run the configuration software to modify the network name and/or password on the devolo network. This will probably work if you plug a device into the router and run the config software on that.

as they say in Germany: ich verstehe Bahnhof (I don't understand)

that means that somewhere in the packaging of the Devolo thing is a password?

Possibly. IIRC from working with my routers, each maker uses certain default MAC addresses and default passwords for set up. If you think you may have changed them and not sure what they are, you can reset to factory default, possibly using a paperclip if it has a small pinhole.

You can usually find the default passwords and MAC addresses on the internet.


But that was working with routers, I'm not sure about these boosters.

Although these units are sold as wiFi boosters, it appears to me that they are creating their own WiFi network. In addition to interconnecting themselves.

So your router has its WiFi network, and each of the slave units of the booster has its own WiFi network.

WiFi networks are generally identified by a network name (SSID, which is what you see when you browse for WiFi networks) and an encryption key (which id either a pass-phrase, a base-16 string of digits or is set using a PIN)

You have configured the network name and password on the router, but not on the Devolo system. Devolo claim to provide a configuration tool to do this set-up and my guess is that it works over their interconnection network - so you only have to configure in one place to set up all the slave units.

Explicit use of MAC addresses is usually only applied when restricting what devices can connect with.

Sho
which bit of their kit are you using?
http://www.devolo.com/uk/Products/dLAN-500-WiFi

What I'm seeing on their website is not a WiFi extender as such, but wireless routers built into a powerline adaptors.
So the link between these extenders is via your house wiring.

Actually that looks like rather interesting kit, I have a powerline adaptor (Hard wired only)from the living room to the bedroom because the wifi doesn't seem to like going through the wall, the set up is like you said push buttons and let the units sort themselves out.

However, and I am guessing here, I would have thought you would have to initially set up each adaptors wireless using a laptop plugged into the lan port.

http://www.devolo.com/products/dLAN-WLAN/dLAN-500-WiFi/data/Installation-instructions-dLAN-500-WiFi-Network-Kit-com.pdf

Have you see the bit in the installation guide about wifi cloning.
Sounds like you first plug the adaptor in close to your router, set it up, then move it to where you want it.

I didn't see anything about wifi cloning
I also have used all possible passwords (there are only 2) and PIN (there is only 1) and it's just stupidly not working

It would help, for example, if they had the lights flash when ready and then on steadily when set up. Or something

but no.

I'm trying to contact them via Twitter, but they're not good (amusingly Sky answered me on a saturday evening within 10 minutes when I had a problem with their lies about what their kit does - it's still not fixed but they were impressively online when I needed them)

I will write them a mail.

I'm afraid using words like wifi cloning to someone who, in the end, wants to press an on button and have their internet on the screen, is counter productive. And it shouldn't be jargon - it should explain properly.

I'll have one more try then I'm taking them back to the shop

Sho
Is the PDF I posted a link to above the same as the instructions you have?

If so WIFI cloning is the second half of the page.

yes it is. I'll have a look tomorrow when I have a bit more time
thanks