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When you need to extend your Wi-Fi coverage in a large apartment, country house or small office, you can add more devices as Wi-Fi extenders to an existing Keenetic router. Connect them over Ethernet for maximum performance or over Mesh Wi-Fi without cabling. Keenetic devices included in the Wi-Fi System form a network with seamless 802.11k/r/v roaming and centralised management from the Wi-Fi System Controller (Keenetic Main Router).

For more information, see the What is the Wi-Fi System? article.

A Keenetic device can be used both as a router and as an extender. In some models, the operating mode is selected by a simple switch on the case, in other models via its web interface.

Mesh Wi-Fi (wireless extender connection) support has been added to all 2.4 / 5 GHz dual-band models (Carrier, Speedster, Skipper, Hero, Titan) in KeeneticOS 3.1.

Buddy models can only act as extenders.

A hidden access point (a wireless backhaul, SSID 'afb6450c906294c87fd6619c8f' or similar) has been added to all dual-band devices acquired in the Wi-Fi System, intended for communication of Wi-Fi nodes with each other.

Starting with KeeneticOS 3.3.1, the 2.4 GHz wireless backhaul connection is also possible.

Connection options of a Keenetic Mesh Wi-Fi Extender are shown in detail in the 'Connecting extenders to Mesh Wi-Fi System' instruction.

Useful additional information can be found in the articles:

Technical description

All nodes operating in Repeater/Extender Mode and acquired by the Wi-Fi Controller automatically configure the WifiMaster1/WifiStation0 interface to connect to a hidden SSID. This backhaul link uses the 4-address format of Wi-Fi headers, similar to WDS, containing Receiver's Address [RA], Transmitter's Address [TA], Source Address [SA] and Destination Address [DA], i.e., addresses of intermediate wireless nodes and LAN endpoints.

Home, Guest and other segments are multiplexed in wireless connections just like they are in wired connections — using VLAN 802.1q.

In each segment, the STP protocol is enabled to provide optimal link selection between extenders. Preference is given to wire connections. When an extender is connected via wire, a wireless connection is still established. Still, data transmission over the STA interface is blocked at the bridge level as long as the cable is connected.

When switched on, the extender selects the optimal access point based on its signal strength and the metric (distance to the controller) transmitted in the 'Probe response' packet. The metric is calculated from the root_path_cost STP value. In this way, the wireless extender can detect if the access point is connected to the controller and how far it is. The controller itself transmits a metric equal to one.

show mws member command in CLI shows the connection information for each extender:

For example:

[
  {
    "cid": "9942687c-3e81-11e7-8489-0da3593493fa",
    "model": "Titan (KN-1810)",
    "mac": "50:ff:20:00:00:3a", 
    ... 
    "backhaul": { 
      "uplink": "WifiMaster1/WifiStation0", 
      "bridge": "8000.50:ff:20:00:01:0e", 
      "cost": 50 
  }
 },
 { 
    "cid": "e5da6c72-e60d-11e8-8000-e975d199df10",
    "model": "Titan (KN-1810)",
    "mac": "50:ff:20:00:01:11",
    ...
    "backhaul": {
      "uplink": "WifiMaster1/WifiStation0",
      "bridge": "e000.50:ff:20:00:00:3a",
      "cost": 100
  },
 ...

The 8000 prefix means that the parent device is the controller, and e000 implies that the parent device is the extender.

When calculating the root_path_cost metric depending on the connection type to a parent device, the following constants are used:

Actual speed, duplex, and link quality are not considered. Wi-Fi signal strength is only used when selecting the best point for a hidden SSID connection.

In the example above, two extenders are connected one after another by 5 GHz Wi-Fi, so the cost of the last one is 50+50=100.