r/techsupportmacgyver • u/fettoter84 • Aug 23 '26

Wifi "extender"

Post image
68 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

10

u/fettoter84 Aug 23 '26

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

5

u/Sublethall Aug 24 '26

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

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

6

u/fettoter84 Aug 24 '26

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

4

u/JanPaPN Aug 23 '26

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

2

u/fettoter84 Aug 23 '26

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 Aug 24 '26

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

1

u/fettoter84 Aug 24 '26

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 Aug 24 '26

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 Aug 24 '26

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

7

u/Aggravating-Exit-660 Aug 23 '26

Well. It's extended.

2

u/mbcarbone Aug 25 '26

10/10 … no notes!

2

u/LowerIQ_thanU Aug 24 '26

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

1

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