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My workplace's wifi setup isn't the best - each of our two floors only has one access point. Naturally, the wifi has a tendency to get really slow (I've seen it at 300 Kb/s), so we've given every cubicle an Ethernet cable, but everyone wants reliable wifi.

Earlier today I ran an experiment and found that connecting my phone to my laptop with Ethernet -> wifi sharing is dozens of times faster than connecting to the company wifi directly, so: Why couldn’t we just set up several computers to create their own networks with the company network’s name/password, basically giving us several more access points?

I feel like there has to be something wrong with this idea because it’s not already a mainstream practice, I’m just not sure what it is. Thanks in advance for any advice!

user24601
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    I'm not certain that your IT department would be thrilled about this. – EEAA Jun 08 '17 at 18:24
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    `giving us several more access points?` Or you could spend some money on more access points which are cheaper then laptops, use less power, and are easier to manage, easier to mount in a location to provide good signal, won't be running a consumer OS like a typical laptop and so on. Your suggestion isn't mainstream, because it doesn't make any sense from a cost perspective. – Zoredache Jun 08 '17 at 18:28
  • ...and wouldn't involve an extra NAT. – EEAA Jun 08 '17 at 18:30
  • @EEAA We don't really have an IT department, just a customer support team who also does the occasional desktop support work. – user24601 Jun 08 '17 at 18:30
  • @Zoredache But we already have plenty of laptops, so we'd be spending no money whatsoever. – user24601 Jun 08 '17 at 18:30
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    There are good ways to solve this problem. Using wifi sharing from desktop machines is not one of them. If you are budget-constrained, Ubiquiti has a decent line of centrally-managed APs that can be had for ~$100US each, which is ridiculously cheap. – EEAA Jun 08 '17 at 18:31
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    `so we'd be spending no money whatsoever.` - time (person-hours) is money, more or less. You would be spending a lot of a persons salary to setup and manage a mess. – Zoredache Jun 08 '17 at 18:32
  • "so we'd be spending no money whatsoever." - I didn't know electricity was free where you live. Mind tell us where so I can move to this paradise? – Rob Moir Jun 09 '17 at 14:01

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No. No. No.

To list just a few things (of the dozens) that are horrible about this proposal:

  • Traffic behind each workstation would be NATted, making auditing impossible. Also, likely breaking certain types of network traffic.
  • Workstations/laptops would need to be left on 24x7
  • Central management is impossible. Centralized management is crucial for a secure, well-performing wifi deployment
  • All traffic passing through the workstation would be able to be inspected and MITM'd. This is a significant security issue.
  • Network performance of the workstations is now beholden to how many wireless clients are connected
  • You have no visibility into which AP people are connected to, making troubleshooting impossible

I could go on for about 10 more bullets. In short, it would be a management, support, and security nightmare. Just don't do it.

As mentioned above, Ubiquiti has some really inexpensive APs that perform well and are centrally-managed.

EEAA
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    Lots of relevant points, but I feel you missed the most important. More APs fighting over the same frequencies is by no means guaranteed to improve performance. – kasperd Jun 11 '17 at 09:49