issue connecting to wifi extender

[jeffkrenn]

I use my landlord's wifi and she lives on the 3rd floor. She bought a wifi extender so I could get internet in my bedroom which is on the back of the house in my basement apartment.

I believe the model of the extender is NETGEAR WN2000RPT Universal WiFi Range Extender. It creates a new wifi signal with an _EXT extension to the original wifi signal that you connect to instead. my laptop is on it now and it's been working perfectly well for computers connecting to it.

However, while my iPhone 4 can see it, it usually cannot connect. The pinwheel spins in settings next to the wifi network's name after i put in the password, but the checkmark never appears. I've tried "forget this network > hard reset > reconnecting with no luck. Every once in a while, it WILL connect, and I'll see the wifi symbol in the menu bar of my home screen, but even then the signal is usually bogus (websites won't load and time out, etc, social networking apps/twitter time out when trying to refresh, etc).

Every once in a great while, it will actually work and be lightning fast, but this is the exception - usually, it's no dice.

I've had the landlord reset the router in the past, after which it works perfectly well for a day or so, but then the issue promptly returns.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Short of asking my landlord to reset the extender on a routine basis, is there anything I can do to resolve the issue? I'm wondering if there's anything in the manual or proxy settings I can put in that will force it to remain connected? Some port that needs to be opened? I'm just not sure how/what to investigate.

I'm very frustrated, and curious what the issue is here. Any help would be very greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[anon(4698833)]

There are several settings within the router itself that can be adjusted when you experience these kinds of issues...and given your explanation i'd say its almost certainly a setting issue within the router that is causing the loss of communication. You can try the router type G/B Mixed adjustment, the wide channel adjustments, MFU settings...there's so many things you can adjust and a lot of times these things fix issues like this. The problem with giving you exact specs is not all of them work for every person in the same way...so you just have to trial and error it.

 

[jeffkrenn]

unfortunately being that neither the extender nor router are in my actual apt, trial and error is difficult - esp since it often works at first and then ceases to later on. I wonder if there's anywhere I can look at suggested specs/config settings that are proven for iPhone 4? ugh this is so frustrating!

 

[anon(4698833)]

Google the hell out of it...there's TONS of stuff about specific settings for routers and Apple products...

Here's one...

iOS: Troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks and connections

 

[jeffkrenn]

so i convinced the landlord to let me take the router into my apt to troubleshoot. There doesn't seem to be much you can do with the router however - when you go to the website listed on the unit, it just basically tells you you've completed setting it up. When i try to log in to the router's IP address, the username and password listed on the unit do not work.

However, after resetting the router to factory settings and connecting my iPhone to it, I switched the wifi setting to STATIC on my iPhone, and after a hard reset and a little time has passed it seems to still be connected so I'm crossing my fingers...

but could setting my IP to static really be the fix? i'm nervous that it is not... I'll keep you posted, but thank you for your help so far!

 

[jeffkrenn]

In case anyone's watching, it seems that setting my IP as static has done the trick, i've consistently had wifi and internet via the wifi signal since attempting this to resolve the issue.

I simply picked the first IP the extender assigned my phone (just after restoring the extender to factory settings and setting it back up again the same way it was before - the only time i was guaranteed to have active connectivity) and made this IP static with the same DNS Server settings and everything. I didn't end up having to configure anything in the router's admin panel (which is good because I couldn't access it!)

thanks for the help SeanHRCC - mostly for getting me researching and trying different things =)

 

[colocolo]

I know this is an older thread, but I have that same unit inside my house and it works great...I surf off my next door neighbors signal.(Thru brick walls and all) ..He has the fastest speed U verse has @24 mbps...I get an steady 3 to 4 mbps inside my home..Sometimes the red light on the Extender comes on, cuts of my signal and a quick reset has me back on the net again..Our 2 laptops..2 i-phones and 1 I-Pad 2 do very well...So do my wireless (2) Blue Ray Disc players.

The trick here is that the repeater is inside my house..I had to make the investment for free wifi..Bought it on e-Bay for a fraction of the cost at even Walmart.

BTW..I buy my Bud next door a case of beer everyonce in a while, and he is a happy camper.

 

[sunadcor]

I have this same problem, only it's in my own house. We got the extender because we couldn't ever get a connection. The problem with it is that for days I will have good coverage and then for no reason, I lose the extension and it goes back to the original wifi network. Sometimes I lose it multiple times in a day. My question is, if I want to try the above mentioned fix, where do I look for the "static" button? It's on the ipad, right?
Thanks