We’ve got a BT Homehub set up at the front of the building but can’t access it from the rear offices.

I set up an old BT homehub as a wifi extender and ran Cat5 approx. 25 metres to the rear offices, but when its all set up and connected there is no internet connectivity.

Plugging a laptop directly into the new Cat5 in the rear offices works fine.
Connecting the Wifi extender directly to the hub at the front works fine, can connect to it and get internet.
Wifi extender connected to working Cat5 in rear offices, no go. I’ve changed the channel selection from auto to 9, the only things I can think of is to change it again?

Help!

I’ve done something similar with a netgear router.

From memory I turned off dhcp server, I’ve also gave it the same ssid and password as the main router. It all works very well.

Are you using a crossover cable two connect the two switches?

Is there a switch on it to crossover like their would be on a hub?

Edit – explanation here
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/34C3163EFAC9F30E86256B8F0060AD0C

This guide worked for me when using an old Homehub2 as access point to my Homehub4.

http://www.filesaveas.com/jarviser/repeaterhubswired.html

Haven’t crossover cables been redundant for years? I thought the router was smart enough to auto switch?

The router should auto switch, make sure you have DHCP off on the second home hub and make sure your LAN cable is connected to its router port and not just one of the switch ports.

Gigabit ethernet will auto-switch (it’s part of the standard), 10/100 will not.

I reckon you’ve got a cable fault. You’ve got a break in one of the twisted pairs on the long cable run so it’s good enough to connect at 100Mbps (which only uses four wires) but failing to connect at 1Gbps (which needs all eight). If it works when you plug it in “directly” the only thing which is changing is that Ethernet cable.

Have you got access to a tester? Failing that; what speed does it show when you plug the laptop directly in?

Thanks guys…

The cat5 cable has been re-terminated 3 times now, once we crimped it directly into connectors but we weren’t sure if all wires had crimped correctly so then wired it into a tool-less box at each end that accepts a normal cat lead. We then re-terminated again but switched all the wires around.

Plugging the lead into the laptop works fine so I think this means there can’t be a fault with the cable?

Oldboy, guide I followed was based on the one you linked to I think, very similar.

The hub is presumably set up correctly as when alongside the hub at the front of the buiding, it works fine. I’ve changed channel about 5 times now, and also turned off all security settings just whilst we troubleshoot it.

Will check the connected speed with the laptop plugged in shortly.

make sure your LAN cable is connected to its router port and not just one of the switch ports.

What do you mean by this? Not sure if a BT home hub differentiates but regardless of that a Wifi extender just needs to be plugged into a normal switch port.

Plugging the lead into the laptop works fine so I think this means there can’t be a fault with the cable?

No. Re-read my post (I may have re-edited after you read it).

If you’re making your own; how long is the cable run? CAT5 goes out of spec at about 100 yards.

Worth seeing what you can ping, too. Can you ping the local router? The remote one? Any difference if you cable into the switch to take wireless out of the equation? (I’d wager the answers are yes, no, no respectively).

Can old HH be used as extenders?……. I’m not sure.

When I want to extend a wifi zone I switch off the wifi on the existing router and hand those duties over to a pair of Apple Airport Extremes connected by either cat5/6 or powerline adapters.
The AE are very simple to set up and create a single true wifi zone with seamless transitions between the routers – which is more than can be said for other so-called ‘extenders’.
At £40 each on eBay they’re a bargain seeing as they allow simple USB drives and printers to become available to the entire network.

Can old HH be used as extenders?……. I’m not sure.

Connecting the Wifi extender directly to the hub at the front works fine

Seems so, unless the OP is mistaken.

From the op.

The cable has been tested via a laptop and so assume it’s working ok.
The hubs work when next to each other and a short cable is used.

So I wonder could they be communicating via wifi and not the Ethernet cable when in proximity?

I would switch off wifi on both hubs connect via Ethernet cable as before and then connect the laptop to the second hub, does it still connect to the internet.

If not then back to the guide on how to set the hub up as a repeater.

If it does then your good and should repeat the test but on the long cable run.

If it works on the long cable run then turn on wifi at the far end and see if you can get this to work, then wifi at the source end.

One thing that occurred to me in the car earlier,

You say you’re crimping your own cables. Are you following the T568B standard or just banging the wires in anywhere and then making sure it’s the same at the other end? Only, this colour scheme isn’t simply cosmetic, which wires are twisted together becomes increasingly important over longer cable runs as you become susceptible to crosstalk between the wires.

I think what you are describing is setting up the second unit as an ‘Access Point’ not an extender?

If that is the case, and assuming that the cabling is okay… check that you have done the following to get the second unit to work as an access point. Apologies if I am teaching my grandmother to suck eggs..

Firstly you need to give it a new ip address on the same network as the other unit. It may have the same one as the other as standard(I think it is usually 192.168.1.254, so go for something like 192.168.1.253 subnet mask will be 255.255.255.0)

You then need to set the default gateway (if there is a setting for it) to the address of the other unit so 192.168.1.254 in the above example.

You will then need to turn off dhcp on the second unit as you only want the first unit to deliver addresses.

Then set up the wireless. Use the same SSID and pre shared key. However you need to choose a different (non overlapping channels) a quick google will show you which channels don’t overlap.

Once you’ve done all of that, you should be in business.

Check you can ping all of the addresses from a machine connected to the network on both ends to make sure you have connectivity.

I’ve had varying success with getting home hubs to work as access points over the years… they aren’t your standard wireless router so they do have all sorts of bloat as mentioned above.

You can always get a cheapo wireless access point and have a crack with that if you don’t get anywhere.

Hope that helps?

Thanks guys, pesky work is preventing further investigation at present.

Pretty sure the hub is correctly set as a wifi extender (aka access point) as when connected with a short cable to the main hub, I can turn off mobile data on my phone, connect to the extender hub and access the internet. When it is moved to the rear office it stops working (and the wifi signal also appears to be a bit hit and miss)

The cat cable was terminated first as TIA/EIA 568B (googled!) so w/orange, orange, w/green, blue, w/blue, green, w/brown, brown.

Then when we switched to the tool-less termination boxes I followed the code on the cover which was in pairs, but there is a circuit board underneath so suspect it is for simplicity and they do connect to the correct pins as above.