Cisco E1500 as a wireless bridge/repeater

[Maximos]

We just got a new house and it requires two wireless access points to cover the entire property for a usable internet experience. The ISP is Brighthouse networks (40mbps service). They have supplied an Ubee modem/router/phone unit. I went out and got a used Linksys E1500 300mbps N router to use as a wireless access point for the second floor/second half of the house. I have installed DD-WRT on it and set it up a wireless bridge repeater. It does receive signal and extend, but speeds are impacted pretty severely. Using the secondary network from the E1500, I get about 10mbps down using speakeasy's speedtest. Directly connected to the original Ubee SSID, I can get 20mbps, but the connection is spotty (hence why I got the E1500 to begin with). So, the question is -- is there a way to configure the E1500 to maintain the same level of speeds I can get using the original network, but keeping the new range and connection quality? Have the E1500 on the network also seems to slow it down as a whole.

maybe I should try using it solely as a bridge/access point as opposed to repeater...

 

[Maximos]

edit: maybe the network was slow earlier, but I'm up in the 20-33mbps range now. can't complain that much. makes me wonder though, would getting a dual band, more powerful router increase the performance substantially?

 

[USF-Nealio]

A.) Bright House sucks. Your speed issues are likely related to their network. There network and customer service is terrible, and I dropped it for FiOS years ago.

B.) I'm not familiar with DD-WRT anymore, but Using Dual-Band to bridge is much better for throughput when bridging. Use the 5MHz channel for the bridge, and the 2.4MHz channel for the wireless clients, and there should be no bandwidth penalty on the bridge.