How I repurposed an old Wi-Fi router to improve one stubborn corner of my home network

Published Nov 11, 2026, 6:30 AM EST Arol is a tech journalist who currently works as a contributor at How-To Geek since 2022. He first began writing online for the short-lived portal of Spanish-language gaming forum Emudesc in 2013. Years later, in 2017, he got his true start in tech journalism working for a small Google-focused site called Pixel Spot. He transitioned to a news and feature writer role at XDA Developers that same year, where he worked until 2021 before making the jump to other websites. Arol brings nearly a decade of writing experience, and the occasional hot take, to his writings. While he's a technology lover at heart, he holds computer hardware and smartphones particularly close to heart. You'll normally find him covering news, although he has also written the occasional deal, buyer's guide, how-to post, and round-up. He's also written for Android Police and MakeUseOf. He's also a Political Science student at the Central University of Venezuela, and a proud member of student movement Àgora UCV. When he's not writing, you'll probably find him hitting the gym, trying to ace a new hobby, reading his textbooks, or traveling. You can reach him at me@arolwright.com. A bedroom in my house had become a Wi-Fi dead zone. Video calls froze, web pages loaded slowly, and the connection was rarely dependable. Instead of buying a mesh system, I decided to see whether an old router sitting in a drawer could solve the problem. Why my Wi-Fi couldn't reach the bedroom Walls, distance, and interference quietly drain Wi-Fi Wi-Fi signals weaken with distance, and the materials between a router and a connected device can make matters worse. Drywall usually has a modest effect, but brick and concrete can significantly reduce signal strength. Metal surfaces can reflect or block radio waves, while large bodies of water can absorb some of the signal. Together, these obstacles can leave rooms with poor coverage even when they aren't especially far from the router. The 2.4GHz band generally provides better range and wall penetration, but its limited channel space and interference from neighboring networks, Bluetooth devices, and microwave ovens can reduce performance. The 5GHz band typically supports higher speeds, while 6GHz offers additional spectrum but generally has less range and weaker penetration through obstacles. The 5GHz band offers much more speed and cleaner channels, yet it weakens faster as it passes through obstacles, and 6GHz is even more sensitive. In practice, a device in a distant room often clings to a weak 5GHz link or falls back to a congested 2.4GHz one, and neither option feels good. Router placement usually makes it worse. Most routers end up wherever the internet provider’s line enters the home, often near an exterior wall, at one end of the house, or tucked inside a cabinet. That placement can leave distant rooms with weaker coverage, especially when several walls or floors separate them from the router. In my case, the problem area sat several walls away from the main router. Phones showed a bar or two, speed tests swung wildly, and anything that needed a steady connection, like calls or streaming, was the first to suffer. Moving the main router wasn’t realistic, and a more powerful router wouldn’t change the fact that the corner sat behind too much material. The real fix was putting a second transmitter closer to the devices that needed it. Turning the old router into an access point Why I chose a wired access point over a repeater Many older routers include a repeater or range-extender mode, and it’s tempting to use it because it needs no cables. The catch is that a repeater has to receive the signal from the main router and retransmit it, often on the same radio. A conventional repeater that uses the same radio and channel for both connections can substantially reduce available throughput, sometimes by roughly half. Placing it inside the dead zone itself defeats the purpose. A better approach is running the old router as a wired access point, which is what I did. An Ethernet cable connects it to the main network, and it broadcasts its own Wi-Fi in the problem area. That wired connection, known as backhaul, avoids consuming Wi-Fi airtime for traffic between the two routers. However, its maximum speed depends on the Ethernet ports and connected equipment. If running a cable through the home isn’t practical, powerline adapters or MoCA adapters that use existing coaxial wiring can work, though results depend heavily on the home’s wiring. Configuration takes a few minutes. After a factory reset, I logged into the old router’s admin page and looked for a built-in access point mode. If there's no dedicated access point mode, you can usually configure one manually. Disable the old router's DHCP server, give it an unused LAN IP address on the main router's subnet, and connect the two routers through their LAN ports. Choose an address outside the main router's DHCP allocation range, or otherwise ensure it won't be assigned to another device. Check the manufacturer's instructions, since some models require additional changes to their routing or firewall settings. In a manual LAN-to-LAN setup, using the WAN port can leave the old router operating as a separate routed network, potentially introducing double NAT and interfering with device discovery, casting, or certain games. The network name is the final piece. Using the same network name, password, and compatible security settings lets devices connect to either access point without manually selecting a different network. However, devices generally decide when to switch, so roaming may be less seamless than on a coordinated mesh system. For 2.4 GHz, use 20 MHz channel widths and assign the access points different channels from 1, 6, and 11 to reduce interference. Check security before reusing an old router Firmware support decides whether reuse makes sense Reusing a router can save money, but security should come first. Even when the device operates only as an access point, outdated firmware can leave its wireless services and management interface vulnerable. Before connecting it to your network, check whether the manufacturer still provides updates, install the latest available firmware, and set a strong administrator password. When official updates have run out, open-source firmware such as OpenWrt can extend a router’s useful life, as long as the model appears on the project’s supported hardware list. A currently supported OpenWrt release can provide security updates and more control over access point settings, although support varies by hardware. Routers with very little flash storage or memory may also be stuck on older releases. Security settings also deserve a second look. Older routers may top out at WPA2, which remains acceptable with a long passphrase, but you should avoid WEP and WPA with TKIP entirely. Disable WPS and any unnecessary remote administration features to reduce potential security risks. It also helps to be realistic about performance. A router from the Wi-Fi 4 or Wi-Fi 5 era won’t match a modern mesh node, and its wireless speeds may fall short of what a fast internet plan can deliver. For a corner that mostly needs stable browsing, calls, and streaming, that rarely matters. For my setup, the result was a dependable signal where there used to be guesswork, built from hardware that would otherwise have been headed for recycling. Had the old router lacked firmware support, a budget access point would have been the safer purchase. A useful second life for an old router The old router gave me reliable Wi-Fi in a room that had struggled with connectivity for years. It didn't require expensive hardware or a complicated network overhaul, just a suitable router, an Ethernet connection, and a little configuration. Not every aging router is worth reusing, but one that's still secure and functional can have plenty of life left in it.