Initial Setup: In one room, we have a modem connected to a Google wifi router. In the office room, there are several PCs and printers, all lacking wireless NICs. Around the house, there are several devices which connect to the Wifi, such as Smart TVs and tablets and so on. Generally, the wifi covers the house and some security cameras as it isn’t that big. A 50’ ethernet cable runs between the modem and office room.

Problem: My friend really does not like the ethernet cable running on the floor, so we are looking at ways to get Wifi->Ethernet in the office room

Attempt 1 and current setup:

1. Bought 2 Powerline Ethernet devices and 1 unmanaged Switch. The Google Wifi was moved to the office room, the modem was connected to the first Powerline and the Google Wifi was connected to the second Powerline. Then the unmanaged Switch was connected to the second port on the Google Wifi.
2. So the current setup looks like this:
3. Internet Room:Modem ethernet port->Powerline ethernet
4. Office Room:Powerline->Google Wifi ethernet portGoogle Wifi LAN port->Unmanaged Switch->Ethernet Devices
5. Result: Powerline seemed to work but then circuit breakers keep getting tripped. IDK if one is defective or the circuits are sensitive or if this is just a electric issue. Whatever, gonna get rid of Powerline

Next idea:

Return switch and powerlines. Buy TP-Link C54 router (done), put it in Extended mode so it acts almost like a wireless bridge, and connect some ethernet devices to the 4 100Mbps LAN ports on the back of it. Well, it’s going to act like a repeater or extender?

I haven’t tested the C54 router with the Google wifi router yet as she lives kinda far away from me and schedule this week is a little crazy.

Have tested the following configurations at home with the C54 router:

Modem->TP-Link AX10 acting as the main router while broadcasting a wifi network. Then giving the SSID/Password to the TP-Link C54 router, which was put into Extended Mode. The C54 then creates its own Extended network, which can optionally use the same SSID as the main network. I would like to disable this but can’t, oh well.

Concerns that I have:

Would having an extended wifi network make it more vulnerable to hacking?

Will double NAT be an issue? I don’t know any more about nat than basics: there is an inside local and inside global address, and outside global and outside local address, and that Port address translation uses port numbers after the outside address to distinguish different devices. I have 0 experience configuring it and only learned the basics from a course online.

Will the TP-Link C54 still work as an extended mode with the Google Wifi instead of a ‘normal’ router? Google wants you to configure mesh devices using the Google Home app, which I’ve never used.

Should I buy a second Google Wifi device to act as a mesh device for the Google Wifi router? The thing is, Google stopped supporting Onhub recently and i am a little scared of not knowing when they will stop supporting the Wifi. Don’t like mysteries.

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tested and works:

main router: TP-Link AX10 broadcasting SSID. 192.168.0.1/24 network with a dhcp pool .100-.254 (and a few devices who have been set to static IP addresses outside that pool)

extended router: TPLINK C54, extended mode. Connects to Wifi network of main router and broadcasts and extended SSID on 5Ghz, and devices connected to LAN ports successfully connect to internet. Tried to give it a static address of .101 through its MAC address but it kept using .146 for itself for some reason. Not sure how that happened.

tested and works:

main router: Zxyel modem/router all in one broadcast SSID on 192.168.200.1/24 network

extended router: TP-Link C54, connects to wifi network broadcast by Zyxel network, then broadcasts its own 2.4 Ghz extended network.

I could only disable broadcasting either the 2.4 or 5Ghz extended network on the second router but not both at the same time while in Extended Mode, i assume it’s a firmware issue. (Maybe I can update it, will check later)

https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/wifi-router/archer-c54/

^the C54 router I just tested. It’s very cheap and more importantly was available at Walmart, which is why I bought it to test. Amazon would be a few weeks no matter what

while looking up mesh devivces, someone on stack said they use something called a ‘backhaul’ when connecting over Wifi to each other, while extenders apparently sacrifice half the bandwidth of the main wifi network? still leaves repeaters and access points? idk…