I'm trying to improve wifi coverage in my home, as I've been having problems streaming Bluray movies to devices in my house due to buffering.  In my bedroom, I can only get about 20 Mb/s down, though I get a solid 23 Mb/s upstream no matter what.  I've got an Xfinity cable modem/router/wifi/phone connection in my office (back bedroom).  I can't move it because I use a direct wired connection to my desktop, and because there aren't any centrally located coax outputs in the house.

I have an old Netgear WNDR3700v1 wireless-N router that I'm trying to use as an access point, but I've had several issues with it.  I flashed it to DD-WRT and set it up as an access point.  The Xfinity modem has 10.0.0.1 as its address, while the default on the 3700 is 192.168.0.1.  I set the Xfinity to only assign DHCP addresses above 10.0.0.4, and manually assigned the 3700 to 10.0.0.2.  I set up the wireless network and it works fine, though doesn't seem to give me much improvement in speed.  I can access the internet through the 3700 fine, either over the wifi or using an ethernet cable.

The issues are as follows:

After setting up the 3700 and seeing everything work, I moved it to the central location.  Internet, etc, still work, BUT I can't get back into it to manage anything - 10.0.0.2 doesn't work, and neither does the original default of 192.168.0.1, either from a computer acessing through the Xfinity, wirelessly into the 3700, or even directly with an ethernet cable.

Devices using the access point can no longer see the Plex server.  I can view a list of shows, etc., but it APPEARS that this is cached in the device, as trying to play anything hangs with no response.

Any suggestions?  This "15 minute" project (as promised by several internet articles, which obviously can't be wrong) has taken a day and a half, including numerous complete resets of the 3700 back to the defaults.

v/r

Mike

DDWRT may use its own IP addressing scheme when it was flashed from the Netgear to DD-WRT. You can get a ping sweep program to try and find the ip address of the DDWRT device. I use NMAP. From a wireless standpoint you would be best getting a heatmapper tool like Ekahau and walk around your house while connected to the internet to find out where your bad spots are.

I have some newer Cisco Aironet access points that can be scored off of ebay for like 30 bucks but I have access to a Cisco Account so that I can keep the firmware up to date. They beat the socks off of your average DDWRT/store bought WAP/Router. Anything with atennas is gonna work better than something without.

As far as PLEX goes it appears that DHCP might be handing out a different scheme/address than what it use to or that its on a different network. All three of your problems are going to be hard to troubleshoot remotely or in a blog. Best to find an IT buddy that can come over and help you out.

Is the 3700 doing DHCP and NATing between the segments?

DD-WRT had some issues with saving configs to NVRAM.

How is the AP connected back to the xfinity gateway? Ethernet?

What do the devices that are connected to the AP think their IP address and GW are?

Honestly there are some pretty good APs out there for short money that will solve this problem and are designed to do this kind of thing.  Do you have the Cisco or the new Aarris xfnity gateway?  If you do they can be easily bridged out and then you can get a better quality router to do the job.  Something with external antennas.  At least 6dB.

See if you can answer the above and we will go from there.  I used DD-WRT for years BTW.  Key word there is used.  There is much better stuff available for about the same money.

I seem to be becoming senile in my old age.  I'd swear that I replied to this TWICE...

Got it fixed.  The WNDR is hooked via Ethernet to the Xfinity router (Arris internet/telephone version).  I was not familiar with configuring networks like this and the youtube videos did not make some things clear.  The videos/instructions I saw/read on reserving IP addresses had said that you had to set the IP address to one that would not be auto-assigned by the DHCP in the router, but finding the manual on the Xfinity router cleared up some things.  First, the manual states that if you reserve an IP address for an attached device, it must be within the pool of addresses that the device will assign.  I also discovered that the router has a management page where you can assign IP addresses to devices, and after doing so was able to access the access point correctly - the various articles never mentioned that you have to assign the AP an IP address from the router rather than the access point itself, although in retrospect that makes perfect sense.  I think the problem was that having assigned it only to the AP (and initially outside the range that the router wanted to use), the router was giving it a different address and therefore my attempts to connect to the AP's address were going literally nowhere.  I now have that address set in both the AP and router, and can access either from any computer connected to either the AP or the router.  I had a bit of trouble getting devices connecting through the AP to be able to access the PLEX server on my desktop, but after some fiddling that works now too.  I'm not sure what I changed to get it working, but it does work now.

I'm using the AP for wireless since it is in my living room (only about 5 feet from the Xfinity router, but on the other side of a wall and it is dual band vs. 2.4GHz only for the router), and have the PS3 connected to the AP via Ethernet.

Mike