How do I check if my wireless repeater is working or not ?

[Deep_Level_Shark]

How do I check if my wireless repeater is working or not ?

I'm using ASUS WL-330N3G in Repeater mode.

[remixedcat]

use wireless with and then without it....

[Deep_Level_Shark]

use wireless with and then without it....

Is there any software which could show the signal strength % ? .

[redvamp128]

Tracert ?? Should show up as a link in-between you and the router... just a thought..(not quite 100% sure it would show up but worth a try)

also like suggested go far away from your router.. then switch off the repeater go to the point at which you loose original signal.. then switch the repeater back on-- you should notice the signal come back..

[dafin0]

Is there any software which could show the signal strength % ? .

this is a handy tool for testing wireless http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/. hope this helps

[Deep_Level_Shark]

Tracert ??

Is their website under maintenance ? Or I'm looking at a wrong url.

Could you please post download link

[redvamp128]

Is their website under maintenance ? Or I'm looking at a wrong url.

Could you please post download link

LOL-- Tracert means traceroute from command prompt..

http://www.mediacoll...traceroute.html

from the command prompt....

tracert www.google.com [/CODE]

You may want to elevate it to administrator ...

Sometimes depending on the repeater model you may see two of your routers listed as being in the route.. to the traced website.

[Deep_Level_Shark]

this is a handy tool for testing wireless http://www.metageek....ducts/inssider/. hope this helps

I used this tool and run this ... I get this report

I dont understand those data in snapshot. I am using D-Link Router and ASUS reapeter .

Could you please tell if my ASUS Reapeter is working OK ?

[dafin0]

I used this tool and run this ... I get this report

I dont understand those data in snapshot. I am using D-Link Router and ASUS reapeter .

Could you please tell if my ASUS Reapeter is working OK ?

so from what i understand you are getting a slightly better connection with the Asus repeater.

[+BudMan MVC]

-70 still a pretty crappy signal -- how far away from devices are you? Across the street?

What do you mean by working? What that you can connect to it? That your connecting to it vs the router? See how its highlighted a bit brighter, that means your connected to it.

Does it cut your speed in half -- then your connected to the repeater ;)

If you want to have better wireless coverage and speed - then run a wire from your router to where you need coverage and use the wireless router/repeater as AcessPoint! You will then get full wireless speed to it, vs half because its wireless connected to your first router. Repeat as many times as you need to provide full wireless coverage for your area with the strength you want.

I am really curious how far away your repeater is if your seeing -70, and where is your actual router? **** my wireless interface is in my metal case of my computer - with NO antenna attached, and is under my very heavy wood oak desk, and I still get better than -84 to routers somewhere down the block from me!

See those 2 with better than your 84, they are somewhere in the neighborhood. If inssider is showing you the signal in Red and Orange, etc.. Not a very good signal ;)

edit: Ok I connected my ALFA usb card, its got an antenna on it and on top of my desk. Look at the jump in signal from some wireless network in the neighborhood -- its now at -67 which is better than your repeater signal.. Where are you at in relation to this repeater? What kind of wireless interface are you using - is it built into your laptop? Usb? What

[sc302 Veteran]

tracert isn't going to show you what you want, it only shows you who/how many people is/are connected to google at any particular time. nextgenhacker101 says so.

[+BudMan MVC]

^ yup that is correct, tracert is used to show how many users are connected to any site, and what their speeds and IPs are...

You have to watch this if you have not seen it!!

And keep in mind the ones you can not see are because your connection is not as good as theres!!

[remixedcat]

also try out the amped wireless android app for a mobile device to see how the strength is for the mobile device as well

[Intersect]

^ yup that is correct, tracert is used to show how many users are connected to any site, and what their speeds and IPs are...

You have to watch this if you have not seen it!!

And keep in mind the ones you can not see are because your connection is not as good as theres!!

i can sleep soundly at night knowing he is l33t with tracert. i just hope he dosnt discover how to use ping.

[sc302 Veteran]

Nm. Before I get pinged for lack of help.

Carry on with a serious discussion.

[remixedcat]

what did you say!!!!????

[sc302 Veteran]

It was a Pftc

Bad interweb humor in a serious topic...if you didn't get emailed with it then don't worry about it.

It wasn't warwagon bad, but it was bad.

[redvamp128]

tracert isn't going to show you what you want, it only shows you who/how many people is/are connected to google at any particular time. nextgenhacker101 says so.

Actually-- depending on the Repeater.... The repeater will echo the router and show up twice in a trace.... ....Read what I wrote...

The one I have now without the repeater on it shows my router once in the trace... with the repeater on the router shows up twice.....

And Yes I know what you are saying, but when a repeater is used it will show up twice in a trace route... (because in essence it goes through the router twice)

You know the hand off from the repeater back to the router.......

basically what happens--

without a repeater....

Your computer says -- go to google.com- router says router here -- go to google.com

With the repeater

your computer says - go to google.com - repeater says router here- relay to router - go to google.com to router- go to google.com

when it relays that signal it shows up as two router connections

That and in the troubleshooting part of my repeater manual it says

run Tracert to diagnose connection issue to router..It says should show as two of the same connection if working. If it does not show up twice the routers connection then it is not working and to reset it and reprogram it.

[sc302 Veteran]

But that is the wrong way to troubleshoot wireless. How budman is going about it is the proper way.

You need to see signal strength, not reply times. While it helps somewhat, it doesn't do squat for you. It doesn't tell you if you are covered enough, it doesn't tell you which ap you are connecting to, the only thing it does is tell you ping/response times.

True it may show you you are connected to a repeater, but if you want to know if you are properly saturated a tracert isn't going to give you that information....you need to look deeper.

That is the difference between book smarts and experience. A book isn't going to tell you to do something else when it is wrong.

[redvamp128]

But that is the wrong way to troubleshoot wireless. How budman is going about it is the proper way.

You need to see signal strength, not reply times. While it helps somewhat, it doesn't do squat for you. It doesn't tell you if you are covered enough, it doesn't tell you which ap you are connecting to, the only thing it does is tell you ping/response times.

True it may show you you are connected to a repeater, but if you want to know if you are properly saturated a tracert isn't going to give you that information....you need to look deeper.

You are telling me the manual is wrong?? He only asked was it working>?

I understand you are talking about signal strength , but this is step one of the troubleshooting guide in my manual for my repeater.

That and it also suggests setting the repeater to a different ip address then re run the tracert . To see if there is a large delay between the handoff times. Quoting the book...

And I was just using google.com as an example-- for this example he should use the IP of his router.. to see if it shows up twice..

[sc302 Veteran]

Yes, yes it is.

It isn't working properly.

[remixedcat]

Also you must have the repeater at least in an area where you get more then 60% sig str. from the wireless router or AP.

[+BudMan MVC]

"The repeater will echo the router and show up twice in a trace"

Where does it say that?? If you are double natting or actually routing you would see different IP in the hop, but you should not see duplicate of your gateway??

That is what would happen if you had a double nat setup with same IP address on both sides of the nat. But wireless is a bridge and the repeater is not your gateway - its just repeating the wireless connection. You should never actually land on the repeater for it to show up in a hop. The IP address of the repeater would be a different IP than your gateway as well, so why should it show the gateway IP twice?

Please provide source to this manual, what is the make and model number of your device and what mode do you have it in?

If you are seeing your router IP twice in a tracert to google, your not really in wireless repeater or bridge mode or WDS type setup. What is the IP address of your "repeater" ?

So when your network traffic be it wireless or wired transverses a bridge, do you see this as a hop? No -- so why should you be seeing your gateway IP twice?

Really curious to how your setup if this is the case!

Think of it this way -- do you see the IP address your AccessPoint when it is connected to your wired network. Then why should you see your gateway address repeated twice when you go through another bridge that just repeats the wireless signal to another AP?

If you want to know what wireless AP your connected to then you would look in your supplicant and it will show you the MAC address of the wireless radio your associated too. The wireless router/ap/repeater/etc.

Now the gui one that comes with w7 is pretty limited, but you can get that info from cmd line with netsh

netsh>wlan
netsh wlan>show all
Wireless System Information Summary
(Time: 5/27/2012 6:05:55 AM Central Daylight Time)

<snipped>
=======================================================================
============================= SHOW INTERFACES =========================
=======================================================================


There is 1 interface on the system:

	Name				   : Wireless Network Connection
	Description			: DW1501 Wireless-N WLAN Half-Mini Card
	GUID				   : 737d5c79-2b15-4e24-87cf-6d4afff1c9db
	Physical address	   : 38:59:f9:5f:63:c1
	State				  : connected
	SSID				   : snipped
	BSSID				  : 00:13:10:<snipped>
	Network type		   : Infrastructure
	Radio type			 : 802.11g
	Authentication		 : WPA2-Personal
	Cipher				 : CCMP
	Connection mode		: Auto Connect
	Channel				: 1
	Receive rate (Mbps)	: 54
	Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 54
	Signal				 : 96%
	Profile				: snipped

	Hosted network status  : Not available

See the BSSID, that is the MAC of the radio your connected too. Now I have snipped the SSID and part of the mac, because there are databases created from wardriving info that you can look up that stuff, and could point you pretty much right to my house. So its a privacy thing.

[redvamp128]

"The repeater will echo the router and show up twice in a trace"

Where does it say that?? If you are double natting or actually routing you would see different IP in the hop, but you should not see duplicate of your gateway??

That is what would happen if you had a double nat setup with same IP address on both sides of the nat. But wireless is a bridge and the repeater is not your gateway - its just repeating the wireless connection. You should never actually land on the repeater for it to show up in a hop. The IP address of the repeater would be a different IP than your gateway as well, so why should it show the gateway IP twice?

Please provide source to this manual, what is the make and model number of your device and what mode do you have it in?

If you are seeing your router IP twice in a tracert to google, your not really in wireless repeater or bridge mode or WDS type setup. What is the IP address of your "repeater" ?

So when your network traffic be it wireless or wired transverses a bridge, do you see this as a hop? No -- so why should you be seeing your gateway IP twice?

Really curious to how your setup if this is the case!

Think of it this way -- do you see the IP address your AccessPoint when it is connected to your wired network. Then why should you see your gateway address repeated twice when you go through another bridge that just repeats the wireless signal to another AP?

If you want to know what wireless AP your connected to then you would look in your supplicant and it will show you the MAC address of the wireless radio your associated too. The wireless router/ap/repeater/etc.

Now the gui one that comes with w7 is pretty limited, but you can get that info from cmd line with netsh

netsh>wlan
netsh wlan>show all
Wireless System Information Summary
(Time: 5/27/2012 6:05:55 AM Central Daylight Time)

<snipped>
=======================================================================
============================= SHOW INTERFACES =========================
=======================================================================


There is 1 interface on the system:

Name : Wireless Network Connection
Description : DW1501 Wireless-N WLAN Half-Mini Card
GUID : 737d5c79-2b15-4e24-87cf-6d4afff1c9db
Physical address : 38:59:f9:5f:63:c1
State : connected
SSID : snipped
BSSID : 00:13:10:<snipped>
Network type : Infrastructure
Radio type : 802.11g
Authentication : WPA2-Personal
Cipher : CCMP
Connection mode : Auto Connect
Channel : 1
Receive rate (Mbps) : 54
Transmit rate (Mbps) : 54
Signal : 96%
Profile : snipped

Hosted network status : Not available

See the BSSID, that is the MAC of the radio your connected too. Now I have snipped the SSID and part of the mac, because there are databases created from wardriving info that you can look up that stuff, and could point you pretty much right to my house. So its a privacy thing.

Sorry that was a mistype--

It says the router will "echo in repeater mode" in a tracert and shows up as a connection (hop) between the router to see if it is working.. and a I use Lynksis router in repeater mode. (two of the same model)

There is a setting to enable specify IP address as well. To make for easier diagnosis.

I am guessing that by ECHO they mean respond back in a tracert. And that it is counting it and the router.

Which in my case is two routers but I figured with a simple repeater it would show up as "hop" as well.

What I meant is that there should be two hops between you and the router.

Sorry for the confusion it says that it does show up in a tracert and says to use the ttl's to see if connection issues exist.

It also has troubleshooter that suggests things to try with the repeater , such as changing its radio from 54,000 to 72000 or 150,000 (Wireless Bands Is the settings in the router to just use N or A-B) and or the changing channel to other channels to reduce interference.

When I run Tracert there is two three hops between me and my internet...

Me to "Router in Repeater mode"

The router that is being repeated

The Cable Modem

(next hop is the internet)

The manual is not exactly the best at explaining but for me -- With my other router setup in repeater mode it shows up as hop . (the repeater itself with a different Mac address)

[+BudMan MVC]

A cable "modem" does not show up in a traceroute - its not a modem if it does, its a GATEWAY (modem/router combo)

What is the model of the devices you are using?

From what you have stated, I would assume your doing at min a double nat, if not a triple?

Why would anyone want 3 hops before they even hit the ISP router? Here is trace to google, there is router in there the 192.168.1.253 address and even if wireless which is at 192.168.1.252 (you would never see this as a hop) Unless you were routing the traffic -- why would you want to run through 3 different segments before you even hit your isp? Even if no nat involved until the last router before you isp.

Can you please provide the make and model numbers of all of your devices so I can read the manual and see how you have it configured - I would guess from 3 hops you don't have it configured in a optimal fashion. If your cable "modem" is a hop - why do you even have a router? Why don't you just use the "modem" that is the border between your private network and the public internet to control access? When you say lynksis -- do you mean linksys?

Here is a trace from a wireless device through my AP, My router and my cable modem!

traceroute www.google.com

traceroute to www.google.com (74.125.225.209), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets

1 pfsense.local.lan (192.168.1.253) 2.159 ms 2.495 ms 2.453 ms

2 c-24-13-xx-xx.hsd1.il.comcast.net (24.13.xx.xx) 11.791 ms 18.604 ms 32.163 ms

3 te-1-2-ur08.mtprospect.il.chicago.comcast.net (68.85.131.153) 19.468 ms 19.426 ms 20.286 ms

<snipped>

So I snipped out the rest of that, and snipped the last couple of octets off my ISP gateway, no reason to give you the network I am on. You can see pfsense is my router. What you don't see is the SB6120 Motorola cable modem that is between my router and the isp. Nor do you see the AP that has an ip of 192.168.1.252 on my network that the traffic flows through as well. Even if I had a reason to repeat that wireless signal - because I could not run a wire to the AP to extend my wireless network. For example like this

You would not see those devices in the trace, even if there were multiples of them chained out.. Just your wireless speed would be cut in half for every repeat.