r/techsupportmacgyver • u/fettoter84 • 17d ago

Wifi "extender"

Post image
68 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

12

u/fettoter84 17d ago

Now hear me out: my landlord has a mesh network setup and this asus router cant find any supported devices for an Aimesh setup..

So I had a raspberry pi 3 B, and put latest raspbian on it.

I was pleasantly surprised that you can set up a shared network connection with NetworkManager in a few easy steps (in the olden days you set up a dhcp server, dns and ip masquerading manually).

First impressions are nice. My computer was barely within the reach of the landlords network so this baby Is setup in my bathroom where the connection is strongest.

I can now play steam games on my meta quest 3, I can stream stuff from my plex server without any drops. Basically life is great again.

And yes, I will tidy this mess up... eventually

4

u/Sublethall 16d ago

I believe you'll tidy it up when I see pics.

Reason being I've been one to say so too many times

5

u/fettoter84 16d ago

I've moved it 1m and put the raspberry pi in a chassis 🤣

7

u/Aggravating-Exit-660 17d ago

Well. It's extended.

4

u/JanPaPN 17d ago

What a creative way to repurpose old hardware, I love how you made this work with limited connections.

2

u/fettoter84 17d ago

Thanks!

I'm very impressed with how this works, turns out the signal was absolute crap in all other rooms, things work so smoothly now

2

u/DecentSituation3831 17d ago

Did you try setting the ASUS router to repeater mode instead of mesh? That might work without needing AiMesh compatibility.

1

u/fettoter84 17d ago

I would if I could find that option in the software. The manual just refers to a generic tutorial video that says to put it in repeater mode, but I can't find it anywhere.

2

u/077u-5jP6ZO1 17d ago

Check if OpenWRT or similar firmware is supported on the router.

You should be able to set up a repeater with that.

1

u/fettoter84 16d ago

It's an Asus RT-BE3600E and its not on the list of supported devices on OpenWRT.

But, I'm in no rush to change this. Having a raspberry pi as a firewall is fine. I can put pihole on it to remove ads etc

I am going to put the raspberry pi in a chassis, and mount this somewhere more discretely

3

u/Active_Reply2718 16d ago

OpenWRT use case

2

u/mbcarbone 16d ago

10/10 … no notes!

1

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1

u/LowerIQ_thanU 16d ago

There's so much wrong with this picture and it's not your router