Methods for extending house wifi

Ive just "updagraded" (or downgraded depending on how you look at it) from a O2 Wireless Box II to an Asus rt-n66u router to coincide with FTTC installation.

With the old O2 wireless box i used to get good strong 2.4Ghz coverage around the entire house and out into the garden. With this new Asus box i can't get a working signal in the living room and certainly not the garden even using the same channels, bandwidth and router in an identical place (nor using other channels). Wifi coverage on it just seems far poorer which is a pity because the O2 box is atrocious for anything else.

Im looking for methods to extend range. Ive got several other routers lying around the house, i tried setting the SSID, Encryption, channel and key to the same as the Asus to see if they'd repeat and none do - i just get a WLAN with no routing (so its not repeating).
WDS i don't really want to go down as it appears the setup will only work for WEP.

Currently im using a messy option of an MR3020 just connecting then relaying via its own SSID and subnet to a different network but obviously that wont provide seamless switching and means physically adding another network to all the devices so its not ideal.
Power plug extenders won't really be an option either.

So what im after is the best method to provide coverage of the house WLAN, ideally appearing as the same network throughout the house. If its possible using my existing routers (O2 wireless box, Netgear 614 or MR3020) then great or failing that looking for hardware recommendations of what to buy.

I was hoping this Asus would be good on wireless but it's not - speed wise its fantastic on 2.4 if close and the same on 5G (if im within about 5ft) but range is far lower. I've tried increasing the TX power to 100mW but that appears to have done nothing looking at field strengths.

Does this help? http://coolwebhome.co.uk/wap/configuring-wap.html

Nope because that involves a physical connection between the routers which i don't have.

Oh, so ethernet cable is out? What about powerline adapters?

Not a great option either (as i said above).

Buy a 802.11ac router such as Netgear R7000, Asus AC68U, Linksys WRT1900AC, EA6900 etc and as these use the latest wifi chips even your existing b/g/n clients will get significant boosts. I get wired lan speeds on my EA6900 when doing speedtests on my FTTC connection anywhere in the house. They're not cheap though...prices start from £150 but then again you get what you pay for.

Edited by deleted (Sun 18-May-14 12:39:39)

I think you said not possible above but I am not sure why. Why not connect the old wireless box to the new router via a short cat 5 cable. Turn the wireless off in the new router. Make sure that you only have one DHCP server running. I would have thought you would then be back to where you were before.

It's a bit of a nasty 'cludge' of a solution but this should work..

You could buy a wireless bridge (£20 or so), configure that to connect to your 'source' router, and then plug your second WAP into that via ethernet and have it broadcast the same SSID etc as your 'source' router.

[Source router] --WIRELESS-- [Bridge] --WIRE-- [Second AP]

You can enter the BSSID MAC for the source router into the bridge to assure it will never connect to anything but the original source router.

It's not pretty, but it'd do the job.

Or just buy a range extender www.shop.bt.com/products/tp-link-tl-wa730re-range-extender-8B76.html

Don't those tend to reduce bandwidth as they're both connecting, and handling wireless connections, with a single radio? Same deal as WDS in that respect.

For £14.56 I can't see it having two radios. It would, however, be a neater solution than my suggestion.