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Got this little range extender because of purchasing a smart TV and placing it at the opposite end of the house where the Netgear WNDR3400 is located. The TV had trouble picking up a consistent signal. In fact it preferred my neighbors signal over 50 ft farther away than my own router!
The range extender, even tho physically small did install easily enough and worked to expectation. My laptop jumped from 2 bars up to 5. The TV connected and streamed Amazon prime movies to perfection.. Using a program called inSSIDer on my laptop I could see the new extenders signal was stronger.
Since that first day or two it has performed erratically. Pages take 15 seconds to load at times. The TV drops the connection....performs poorly when forced back on it. My laptop improves radically when the extender is unplugged.
Trying to avoid moving my router closer to the center of the house to take care of the TV issue as it has several hardwired connections to legacy pcs that would be a mess to extend.
Have moved the extender around .....closer and further from the router....all locations that had at least two bars of signal strength. Sometimes you think you found the right spot as it works well...but then goes erratic again.
Can't find any mention on the internet of problems with this model tho admittedly it is fairly new. There is a new firmware upgrade available from Trendnet, but the only symptoms it corrects have to do with Russian language fixes so I haven't installed it. There are scant instructions on how to download new firmware anyway. They do say to hardwire it to your computer for the download and give power to it.....but then what?
Anyway it acts as tho the two routers are "thrashing" ...i.e. my laptop is getting data from the extender, then something from the 3400 interrupts it (duplicate data?) so both stop and start all over again ad infinitum. Just a guess.
the set up procedure gives no recourse for settings in the extender. As far as I can see it duplicates all the settings of the feeding router except for adding a "2" to the name (SSID). I already have a 2 ending the name of the main router, so apparently it added another 2 after a space (which seems illegal). BTW there is only one router. The 2 is simply a suffix of a name for a newer router installed about 8 months ago.
So I am hoping someone out there has a suggestion.
The range extender, even tho physically small did install easily enough and worked to expectation. My laptop jumped from 2 bars up to 5. The TV connected and streamed Amazon prime movies to perfection.. Using a program called inSSIDer on my laptop I could see the new extenders signal was stronger.
Since that first day or two it has performed erratically. Pages take 15 seconds to load at times. The TV drops the connection....performs poorly when forced back on it. My laptop improves radically when the extender is unplugged.
Trying to avoid moving my router closer to the center of the house to take care of the TV issue as it has several hardwired connections to legacy pcs that would be a mess to extend.
Have moved the extender around .....closer and further from the router....all locations that had at least two bars of signal strength. Sometimes you think you found the right spot as it works well...but then goes erratic again.
Can't find any mention on the internet of problems with this model tho admittedly it is fairly new. There is a new firmware upgrade available from Trendnet, but the only symptoms it corrects have to do with Russian language fixes so I haven't installed it. There are scant instructions on how to download new firmware anyway. They do say to hardwire it to your computer for the download and give power to it.....but then what?
Anyway it acts as tho the two routers are "thrashing" ...i.e. my laptop is getting data from the extender, then something from the 3400 interrupts it (duplicate data?) so both stop and start all over again ad infinitum. Just a guess.
the set up procedure gives no recourse for settings in the extender. As far as I can see it duplicates all the settings of the feeding router except for adding a "2" to the name (SSID). I already have a 2 ending the name of the main router, so apparently it added another 2 after a space (which seems illegal). BTW there is only one router. The 2 is simply a suffix of a name for a newer router installed about 8 months ago.
So I am hoping someone out there has a suggestion.
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