Newbie Wireless setup, Working but needs second opinion

[Raincity]

I have finally decided to get into the 21 century and go wireless since my cat has decided to take on a habit of chewing on LAN cables laying around the house. I decided to go with two TPlink Archer 7 using the second as a extender, access point or what else it may be referred too these days. I just need a second look since networking is not my forte and have been existing on good old CAT cables and non-managed gigabyte switches since my adaption of high speed internet in the home 15 years ago.
With the router I did the normal setup and then changed the security settings to WPA2 AES for both 2.4 and 5G and used separate 48 character passwords for both bands. WPS is also disabled for both bands. On the extender. Its wired via CAT6 LAN to LAN from the router. The routers DCHP start was changed to 100-149 and changed the extender to 150-199. The extender IP address was also changed to 192.168.02 and DCHP and NAT settings were disabled. On the wireless side of the extender. I just cloned over the SSID’s and password settings that the router uses. So far everything seems to be working. Was this the correct way to set up everything in this environment? Did I need to change the start and end IP on either unit since DCHP was disabled on the extender.

 

[smitbret]

I have finally decided to get into the 21 century and go wireless since my cat has decided to take on a habit of chewing on LAN cables laying around the house. I decided to go with two TPlink Archer 7 using the second as a extender, access point or what else it may be referred too these days. I just need a second look since networking is not my forte and have been existing on good old CAT cables and non-managed gigabyte switches since my adaption of high speed internet in the home 15 years ago.
With the router I did the normal setup and then changed the security settings to WPA2 AES for both 2.4 and 5G and used separate 48 character passwords for both bands. WPS is also disabled for both bands. On the extender. Its wired via CAT6 LAN to LAN from the router. The routers DCHP start was changed to 100-149 and changed the extender to 150-199. The extender IP address was also changed to 192.168.02 and DCHP and NAT settings were disabled. On the wireless side of the extender. I just cloned over the SSID’s and password settings that the router uses. So far everything seems to be working. Was this the correct way to set up everything in this environment? Did I need to change the start and end IP on either unit since DCHP was disabled on the extender.

Congratulations, you have a Router and an Access Point and it sounds like they are working well. Just two things

1 - You didn't need to adjust the DHCP range on the Access Point since you were going to be turning DHCP off. The C7 that you set up as the router will take care of all DHCP assignments whether it comes through the router or the AP. What you did won't hurt anything but was unneccesary and you shortened the list of available DHCP addresses for the entire network to 192.168.0.100-149. I would go back into the router and expand that range through 192.168.0.199. I see that you suspected this and your inclination was correct.

2 - You should probably set dedicated WiFi channels on the Router and the AP so you don't get overlapping signals. Most routers default to 'Auto' and there is a chance that both the AP and the Router choose the same channel and interfere with each other.

Get an app like this:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wifi.analyzer
It will survey the airspace and show you which WiFi signals are available and how strong they are. Figure out which two channels are the least congested (1,6 or 11) and then set the Wireless Router to one channel and the AP to the other. Do the same with the 5GHz band. If you are in a crowded WiFi neighborhood it should help troublesome WiFi signals and keeps the two strongest (your router and AP) from interfering with each other.

 

[Raincity]

Will do thanks for the input.