Ok so I have made some progress, Ive set up both original router and the WPA4220 with identical SSID's, and security settings but as posted above different channels. I now only see one wifi connection available for my phone, and not the same one duplicated twice.

I am still not convinced this is working as advertised though.

When I connect to my wifi via my phone it will connect to the closest source, so my router is upstairs, and the WPA4220 is downstairs.

When I connect to my wifi upstairs I will get full wifi reception near the original router, however when I take my phone downstairs I lose nearly all the signal, despite my phone being within feet of the WPA4220 and visa versa, so I forget the connection, reconnect downstairs and full reception and then when I go upstairs I lose it again.

Clearly my phone isn't switching between the two automatically. This is the same for 2 phones and 2 hudl's so its not just my phone.

I thought the whole idea of this was it would allows your devices to seamlessly roam within your home network? In fact it says almost exactly that on the back on the box.

So what am I doing wrong?

Honestly, not sure. I can confirm that my devices do switch between my main router and my WPA4220 automatically so it's definitely something the device supports.

Have you tried setting up a static IP on your phone? It seems to resolve many issues that the WPA4220 has, and may help to troubleshoot this problem.

Ok, after a bit more testing I have discovered that my devices will automatically switch by themselves.

Its not as I had imagined though. I find that the devices will only switch once they are almost completely without reception from the current source or at least after a significant amount of time has passed. So for example when my phone is using the signal broadcast from the router upstairs, I have to take it right in to the very corner of the room downstairs until the signal drops to 1 bar before it will switch. If I am just sitting on the sofa, it will hang on to the signal from upstairs on 2 bars despite me being within 10 feet and direct LOS of the WPA4220.

It also seems to hang on to the WPA4220 signal more then my original router, although that does not entirely surprise me and I would guess the WPA4220 has a stronger broadcast signal then my now ageing BT Voyager router.

I guess that unless devices have more advanced options to more aggressively switch over (which neither my phone, partners phone and hudl x2 have) there is little that can be done about this. I wonder if in the future this is something designers and manufacturers will consider.

Also to a certain extent I guess it doesn't matter, as for most things you are ever going to use your phone/hudl for I doubt it would make much difference at all between having two bar and full reception.

Anyway I think I have this working to about as good as it is going to get, which I am happy about and thank you for all the advices given on these forums it was indeed a massive help. The wired function of this device works perfectly, my TV has a LAN port and I can stream HD TV through the homeplugs perfectly with no buffering so the wired performance is second to none, as for the wifi fuctions, its ok, but not quite fulfil the "have full wifi reception everywhere in my house" expectation I had.

Hi Budforce,

Have you managed to get this working consistently?? I have followed all the suggestions and the network that is created seems to work as expected for a while, but after a few days I have problems with devices seeing each other when some are connected to the router and others are connected to the wireless extender. I'm getting really frustrated with this as it just isn't consistent enough. Most of the time now I have the extender unplugged as it isn't reliable.

Any thoughts from anyone greatly accepted. To me it seems like this is an issue that won't be resolved without a firmware update. Can this issue be raised with TP-Link to see if the firmware can be updated?

Thanks again!

hi. i also would like to set up my powerline adapters as bridges to expand my existing WIFI network. (i suspect this would require the units to support IEEE 802.1D.) the current situation, which is that it sets up new networks with, as far as i can tell, new DHCP servers, NAT boxes, etc., is very problematic. a layer 2 bridging situation, in my experience, would be much more reliable. (it's what i do, for example, when i have wired ethernet with, e.g., Apple Airports.)