Hi,

I am looking for advice on choosing the best wifi range extender/booster to help with an issue I am experiencing.

My home wifi and internet access is provided via a Virgin Media Superhub 3.0.

Wifi performance is not great but up until now has been adequate from the superhub.

I have one particular device (Brennan B2) which is proving very sensitive to the strength of the wifi signal in order to fully function so need an (inexpensive) solution that will boost the signal in the vicinity of this device.

I require the B2 to have a fixed IP address so that I can see it as NAS device.

The B2 uses DHCP to pick up its IP address and it is not possible to configure it with a static address so currently I reserve an IP address on the Virgin superhub so that I do not have to fiddle with the NAS settings on my PC.

I know that most wifi extenders effectively create a new local subnet, broadcast new SSIDs to enable local connection of devices, act as a local DHCP server to allocate IP addresses to the local devices, and forward traffic to/from the primary router including internet access.

My questions are :

1. Can I disable DHCP server functionality on TPLink extenders so that DHCP server functionality defaults to my Virgin Superhub ?  This would allow me to use my existing home subnet and IP address reservation.

Do I need to do any special configuration of the Virgin hub to enable it to complete the DHCP dialogue via the extender (DISCOVER/OFFER/REQUEST/ACK) ?

2. If (1) is not possible can I reserve an IP address for a specific MAC address by configuring the TPLink extender ?

Note that I don't want to replace the router functionality of the virgin hub with a 3rd party router (i.e. use the Virgin hub only as a cable modem) , nor run a wired connection the Brennan B2.

Thanks