Wi Fi extenders

Keithk

Keithk

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 3, 2005
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Location
South Africa
The million dollar question:
Do Wi Fi range extenders really work or is it just another money making gadget.
Some call it a booster and others a range extender.
There is a lot about range extenders on the net and all so confusing with what to do and what they can do.
To buy one is a good question, yay or nay ?
 
I bought one of the Xiaomi ones for R300 and it works very well for us. Big advantage is that it can run off a cell charger or battery bank during Loadshedding. No complaints.
 
I had one previously and it worked well - was an el-cheapo that i got for R300 or something like that. A main drawback of using them is that they halve the wireless speed, so if your network is capable of say 100Mbps if you connect to the extender you're likely to only get 50Mbps - roughly

Also need to see what type of extender it is - some have had great experience with the Powerline extenders while those ones don't work so well in larger houses with multiple DB / circuits. so... YMMV
 
powermzii said:
I had one previously and it worked well - was an el-cheapo that i got for R300 or something like that. A main drawback of using them is that they halve the wireless speed, so if your network is capable of say 100Mbps if you connect to the extender you're likely to only get 50Mbps - roughly

Also need to see what type of extender it is - some have had great experience with the Powerline extenders while those ones don't work so well in larger houses with multiple DB / circuits. so... YMMV
Click to expand...
Thanks for your reply
 
powermzii said:
I had one previously and it worked well - was an el-cheapo that i got for R300 or something like that. A main drawback of using them is that they halve the wireless speed, so if your network is capable of say 100Mbps if you connect to the extender you're likely to only get 50Mbps - roughly

Also need to see what type of extender it is - some have had great experience with the Powerline extenders while those ones don't work so well in larger houses with multiple DB / circuits. so... YMMV
Click to expand...
Hmm does it really half the speed??
i used one not too long ago but it felt fine to me... Just the internet was poor itself lol
 
Well, they do and don't work. Like the above states when in a wireless bridging mode they effectively halve the wireless speed in order to extend the range. It is better to buy two El-cheapo's and then run a cat 5 or run EoP to extend the wireless network to places that aren't covered by the original wifi. I've done the latter with EoP and it works like a charm, just make sure your channel settings is on the least noisy channel and both have the same security as well as channel settings oh and name and you'll be good to go
 
Thanks for all the feedback. I think it would be safe to say I should just relocate my router so that it is just in a better reception position
 
They do work, but never near as well as simply running a cable or doing a proper mesh instead.

If at all possible run a cable between access points.

Even better run a system where the access points are aware of each other and don’t act as independent units doing their own thing.

If you use a repeater you lose half your wireless bandwidth to the wireless bridge between them in most cases.
 
Run a cable and use a sub R300 wifi AP like a TP-Link WR840N. Cheapest option with the best throughput. There are lots of people selling old wifi routers too for next to nothing. They can all work as AP's.
 
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