Using an old Sky router as an additional bridge/access point/whatever

Sitting here waiting for the chap from Plusnet to arrive and hook us up to super-duper fibre broadband, I was wondering if there was anything clever I could do with the old Sky router?

Current half baked plan is to connect it to the new router (which will be in the lounge) via a couple of those network plugs, or maybe an ethernet cable if I can work out a route, to the office/study (which is above the lounge), so we have full-on WiFi upstairs as well.

We do already have a Sky repeater/booster thingy upstairs though (which I assume will work with the new router), so I’m not sure I’d be gaining much. Although that could go out into the garage. Hmmm…

My old sky booster (little white square box) didn’t work with my new BT Router (although I didn’t spend much time trying)Instead, I’ve just bought a TP Powerline kit with Wireless, and my wifi is now brilliant all around the house, with anything connection critical getting an ethernet cable to from the nearest powerline adapter.

My old Sky booster works with my TalkTalk fibre router……had to log into it and mess about to get it working but all the details were on the web

Should be straightforward, I’ve done it with an old tiscali router. Log into the router firmware (type 192.168.1.0. Or..1.1. That’s probably the ip address for the router itself). Then you’ll need to go into settings and turn DNS addressing off (the new router will want to assign all the ip addresses on your local network, so this one needs to be told not to). Often helps to assign it a fixed ip that is well out of the range the new router is likely to try such as 192.168.1.255. It should then work as a switch and if you’ve left wifi on, a wireless access point.

I think you mean DHCP rather than DNS.

Then you’ll need to go into settings and turn DNS addressing off

Should read DHCP. Don’t use .255, that’s the broadcast address and it may break something. Fixing the ip is a good idea, but check the DHCP scope on the new router, restrict it to less addresses and put the old router out of this range
(i.e. DHCP scope 192.168.0.2 – .50, old router at .100)

Oops. I could try and blame the smart phone keyboard, but that was a brain fart.

I’m looking at a similar thing with an old router. It seems very few routers can be used as wireless extenders (= repeater/booster), although most should be able to works as access points (AP, i.e. you connect the box via cat5 back to the router to generate a wifi signal further away. Connections to the repeater are slower, as information is being echoed, whereas APs maintain speed. If you can run an ethernet cable to the garage you could set up an access point there, or just use it as a wired hub/switch.