After doing some research, it looks like a router installed with DD-WRT has the capability to run as a wireless repeater. And it looks like the setup is fairly simple to do. It does knock your bandwidth down by half because the repeater uses one half bandwidth to communicate with the primary router, and the other half for users. I think I can live with that...
Thanks for all the responses!
Originally Posted by
LIH Prem
Netgear makes some wireless extenders you might consider, if you don't want to run cable everywhere. I had one of those, for b/g only, they are fine. I don't remember if they support anything besides WEP or not, and I think they are kind of pricey for what you get.
You can use an Airport Express as a wireless bridge or as a wireless extender. I have 3 of them at home, one creating a 5ghz n-only wireless network, the second one is a wireless n bridge on that network to my office (it connects to a switch in the office), the 3rd one is an older b/g only AE, that extends my b/g network downstairs.
In order to use the Airport Express as a wireless extender, you need a base station (router) that implements WDS. The Apple base stations implement it, of course. Also, DD-WRT implements WDS, at least the version that I have did, and it works fine, once I figured out how to configure it. IIRC it wasn't hard to do. You have to enter the mac address of the base station in the extender and vice versa. I think the trick was to select LAN mode on the base station's WDS tab, where you enter the extenders mac address, and to remember that you can only run WEP with WDS.
You can also pick up anything that will run DD-WRT and turn it into a wireless bridge.
-David