I have a fibre connection with a Tenda wifi router. I have installed tp-link and Linksys Powerline plugs - the tp-link for the office and the Linksys for the external cottage. I have a Huawei B315s-22 wifi router that I would like to use for the cottage, but I have not been able to find anyone who has set this router as a wifi extender. So, I would like to install OpenWrt on to this is router, but, so far, I have not found a firmware installation for this router. I have also not been able to find which CPU and memory configuration it has. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks Barry.
PS. I am prepared to sacrifice the router as a testbed if necessary.
You can check for your devices yourself, if yours aren't listed, they are not supported.
1 Like
I have checked the database and I see it is not listed, but if I can find out which CPU is installed and the memory configuration of the router, I will try to install the firmware from a router that uses the same hardware.
That is guaranteed to permanently damage your device, there are no generic images like routers.
1 Like
Consider this solution..
You can use your power line adapters to connect two nodes of the mesh.
How will that give me wifi in the cottage? I can already connect via (Powerline) ethernet to the PC and the laptop, but our phones need wifi.
Each mesh node is a wifi access point.
One node would connect to your tenda via ethernet directly and be the hub node. Satellite nodes would go in your cottage, office, etc and could be connected via powerline ethernet, or normal ethernet, or wifi. You would have a single ssid wifi available in all areas.
I do know how to set up wifi in the cottage, but the Powerline plugs are not wifi plugs. If you read the start, you will see I am asking how to use my old router as a wifi extender. Wifi does not appear by magic - it needs to be implemented by a wifi device.
The stock firmware of most wifi routers can be used as a "dumb AP" also known as an access point bridge.
Set its LAN IP to a static IP inside your LAN. Turn off the AP's DHCP server. Connect one of the LAN ports to your LAN network. Do not use the WAN port.
Usually wifi extenders are wireless repeaters. Since you have powerline to the location of interest what you want is Access Point mode as @mk24 mentions. This hopefully is available for your device. If not there are some quite cheap devices that would work. I set up a friend with nearly identical issues using gl-inet AR750 as access point for example.
1 Like
Thanks for the advice. My Huawei does not have the option to set as access point. I switched off the DHCP, set the IP to 192.168.1.25 as the Tenda DHCP is 100 to 200. It didn't work.
Anyway, a friend has offered me an old (2014) TP-Link router which I will be getting next week and I will try to set that up as an access point.
1 Like
ADSL routers don't have the option to turn them into access points, but they do have wireless, so you don't need that option. Configure that wireless with the parameters of your current network and do what @mk24 and @dlakelan have told you. disable DHCP and put a fixed IP out of the DHCP range of your main router. And finally, and very important, connect a LAN port of the Huawei router to one of the powerlines with internet. You cannot turn the Huawei router into a repeater without changing the firmware, so you have to connect it to the powerline.
My two cents...
1 Like
Yes this is important in the AP scenario, it can't be the WAN port.
you don't say whether you connected to a LAN port, but try it again making sure you connect to LAN.
1 Like
Hi Willy, the Huawei B315 is an LTE/4G router, not ADSL.
(My pocket Huawei router can be set as an access point, but (obviously) it does not have an ethernet port.)
I am trying again, but I can't get a wifi connection to the B315, which I need to re-configure the router.
I did connect to a LAN port, but I didn't check whether it was WAN. I now know that port 4 is WAN, but it required looking very carefully at the almost unreadable info above the 4 ports.
I know @ProvoZA , I had it one in the past, but it's the same... it doesn't have a WAN port and you don't need it, you only need one of the four LAN ports, and connect that LAN port to a powerline with internet.