Troubleshooting Netgear Wi-Fi extender issues

Hi everyone, I was wondering if someone might be able to lend me a hand... I’ve been using a Netgear WN1000RP extender, and honestly, it worked perfectly for the first two days. But now, it keeps dropping my connection constantly; I can barely stay on a Skype call for more than thirty seconds before it cuts out, which is frustrating because my signal strength shows as full. I have both my laptop and my phone connected to it at the moment. The strange thing is, I keep getting these notifications saying someone else has joined the network, followed by an IP address being displayed.
The situation is pretty much like this right now. Is it actually possible for that many people to be piggybacking on my connection, considering I still have to enter a password to join, since I believe WPS is enabled...

And if there really are that many devices connected, who on earth are they?! -.- How can I actually figure out who is accessing my network, and what steps should I take to make sure everything is secure?

How many wireless devices are actually running in your house? If it’s just your laptop and your smartphone, then you've basically got an open invitation for the neighbors to leech off your bandwidth. Having WPS enabled is like leaving a spare key under the doormat; any neighbor with even a passing interest in tech can bypass your security without breaking much of a sweat. My advice? Go into your modem settings, disable WPS entirely, switch over to WPA2 protection, and set a brand new password. Once you do that, let's see if those connection issues finally clear up.

George Peterson3 said:How many wireless devices are you actually running? If it’s just your laptop and your phone, then it's highly likely your neighbors are piggybacking on your connection. With WPS enabled, any neighbor who's even slightly tech-savvy could bypass your security without much trouble at all. I’d suggest disabling WPS in your router settings entirely, switching over to WPA2 encryption, and setting a brand-new password... then you can see if the issues clear up.

So, I just went through my router settings and I see that I have WPA2 protection active, but my Netgear still shows WPS as an option. Regardless, I went ahead and changed my password and disabled the WPS feature on my Netgear unit. Could you please tell me if it's actually possible that someone was squatting on my network? I keep getting kicked off constantly and the signal strength has become incredibly weak, even though everything was working perfectly when I first set it up...

Look, the guy already told you it’s doable... 🤷

And honestly, this has nothing to do with your signal strength. Unless you moved your gear around or put up some new walls, signal strength—or purity, if you want to get technical—only matters based on how much other equipment is fighting for the same bandwidth nearby. It’s highly likely a few more neighbors in your area finally set up their home Wi-Fi, and now your frequency is just slammed with "noise." Your best bet is to crank up your own signal so it drowns out the neighbors, or if your router supports 5 GHz, just jump over to that. The 2.4 GHz band is basically a crowded subway station at rush hour:

http://pocketnow.com/2014/01/23/5ghz-wifi

Jonathan Gomez9 said:So, I was just digging through my router settings, and while I have WPA-PSK2 enabled, my Netgear setup actually shows WPS is active. Anyway, I went ahead and changed the password and shut off WPS on the router. Could someone have actually hopped onto my network? I keep getting kicked off and the signal is acting weak, even though everything worked perfectly when I first set it up.

From what I could gather looking at that screenshot, you had six different devices connected to the modem right then. That’s why I was asking—how many people usually jump on this connection, and do you actually know who they are?

Taipan gave you some solid advice there, too; try switching the channel the wireless signal is broadcasting on. It's also possible that your range extender is acting up. Maybe try a hard reset and run through the configuration again from scratch.

As for the possibility of someone hacking your Wi-Fi, if WPS is turned on, it's definitely a real concern. I've actually dealt with this myself; even with WPA-PSK2 protection active, nothing really stops them if WPS is left enabled.