WiFi Extender

[Budman]

I purchased a new Ryzen laptop to replace an older Dell but now I'm having trouble connecting to the Wi-Fi in the back room part of the house. The Dell would connect but never was a strong signal. Also we have added a deck just beyond this back room and get no signal out there.
I'm on Spectrum using their equipment (Modem & Router) but would like to get signal out to the deck and this back room. I'm not real PC network savy so I need something fairly simple to install & maintain.

I was looking at this on Amazon as I have a couple of TP-Link hubs that work great, but not sure what all it entails to setup. I see where they suggest using the TP-Link app to install but I'm not much on phone apps, so would rather skip that if possible.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09N6S5QJ...35-20&channelId=1&plpRedirect=mhFallback&th=1

If somebody has any other suggestions for around $60 or so I'm all ears. I have a treadmill in the back room and use my laptop to watch Youtube vids while on the treadmill so the extender dosen't have to be anything fancy. I just want something reliable, easy to install & maintain.

Thanks.

 

[GotNoRice]

The problem with these traditional "extenders", in their default configuration, is that you end up in a situation where the same radio is trying to juggle two separate tasks. That's bad.

For example, the extender will likely be connected to the upstream Access Point / Router using 5Ghz, and then broadcasting it's own 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz signals. If something connects to the extender using 5Ghz, then that 5Ghz radio is now having to perform two separate tasks (communicating with the upstream Access Point / Router, and communicating with downstream clients), even though it can only do one of those things at any given time. The radio has to talk to the upstream AP, stop, then talk to the downstream clients, stop, rinse and repeat. It adds latency while killing throughput and reliability.

This is why true "mesh nodes" typically have additional radios. They have a dedicated radio to handle the upstream connection, and separate radios to handle the downstream connections to clients. Every radio has a specific task, none are having to juggle.

With a traditional extender, you can help the situation somewhat by assigning each of the two radios to a specific task. For example, assign the 5Ghz radio to act as a dedicated connection to the upstream access point while the 2.4Ghz radio exclusively handles all connections from clients. The only downside here is that 2.4Ghz is slower, but if you aren't doing anything particularly bandwidth intensive, then this can work well. You can usually still get at least ~200Mbps over 2.4Ghz WiFi 6 and that is still more than enough for 4K video streaming.

If you are just going with a traditional extender with only 2 radios as discussed, there is definitely no reason to shell out $60. This should be able to do everything that the TP-Link can, and has options to dedicate radios to a specific purpose if desired:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFRX4HFF

 

[Sycraft]

For a cheap solution, GotNoRice is right. Something like that will help with signal levels, but it won't be great. If you use it, you want to put it somewhere that it has decent signal to the AP, and is still close enough to the back room to give signal there. You can get signal. Won't be the best speed or latency wise, but it can do it.

In terms of doing it better, there's various levels, I'll stick with consumer stuff and not go crazy:

1) The best is to do a mesh router setup with wired backhaul. The "correct" answer is you lay an ethernet cable from the router to the AP and connect them using that. When you do that, you get great WiFi all over. It is all low latency, high speed, etc. That's how I have my house done and even at the far end of the house the WiFi supports the full 2gbps of the Internet connection and does so with the same latency as being on the router itself. The problem is, of course, having to run the cable. You have to ask yourself how big a pain it is in your situation and if it is even possible. However if you can do it, it is really worth it. It just solves all the issues you can otherwise encounter and is completely stable. Worth at least looking at what would be involved to do a cable run.

2) The next best is mesh routers with dedicated radios for backhaul. That generally means either triple band 5GHz radios for WiFi 6 or quad band radios for WiFi 7. You set them up making sure there's good overlap between their radios so they can easily talk to each other. Sometimes this means needing more than one to get where you want to go. The "dedicated backhaul" means that they have a frequency they use just for talking to each other, and a different one for your devices. So in a 5ghz setup you might use the low bands, 36-48, to communicate AP to AP, and then the upper band channels, 149-161, to talk to your devices. That helps keep the speed up and makes the latency penalty less bad. It can be really fast for WiFi 7 with 6ghz radios but those are VERY short range so you can end up needing a bunch of overlapping APs to actually use 6ghz as backhaul. 5ghz, particularly when the channel is only 80mhz gets much better range. Because of how power limits work an 80mhz 5ghz channel will have higher peak power than a 160mhz 5ghz channel.

3) After that the best bet is mesh routers with shared channels. The clients and the APs use the same channels for communication. More latency, less bandwidth, but it does work. The newest WiFi 7 ones can potentially hop around and use all the bands with MLO to try and alleviate some of the issue. Of course WiFi 7 ones cost more and you start to get in to the "only matters if you have pretty fast Internet" territory.

4) Finally what you are doing, using an extender on the network. Works similar to a mesh router, except they can't communicate and coordinate on things. How much that matters depends, some mesh routers are better than others at actually working together. The biggest issue is usually roaming. Good mesh routers will properly support 802.11r, 802.11k, and 802.11v which help devices quickly move from one AP to the next without an issue. With an extender you don't usually get that so sometimes there's more of a blip when you move from the extender back to the router.

 

[pendragon1]

i found it easiest to just rent a pod from my isp...

https://www.spectrum.com/internet/w...ders?msockid=274fca22892269401db0dcbd88da68de

 

[zandor]

A couple things I'd add to what Sycraft wrote-

A lot of extenders can be wired. This can be better than even higher end mesh units using wireless backhauls. You lose the fast roaming that gives devices hints about when they should switch nodes, but you gain a wired backhaul. It depends on the equipment and the environment. If you have a lot of interference from neighbors or you're trying to cover a large home wired is worth more. There are only so many channels, and devices sharing channels slows things down. Gear with dedicated backhaul radios will do better than gear without, but you still have to deal with the limited number of channels. Nice mesh stuff isn't free, and pulling cable is usually the cheap option if it's easy.

MoCA never gets enough attention. It's basically ethernet run over coaxial cable meant for cable TV. Adapters aren't cheap, a pair will probably cost you $100, plus you'll need to add a MoCA filter where the cable comes in so neighbors can't connect to your network and you need MoCA capable splitters, but it's way cheaper than doing drywall work to install new wiring. It's something to consider if you get an extender and don't like the performance. A lot of extenders have an RJ-45 port on them and can be used as an access point with a wired backhaul.

Finally, if you're handy and have an unfinished basement... just pull cable. Well, assuming your modem & router are on the ground floor.

 

[Sycraft]

Yes wired backhaul is always the best answer, be it with mesh units, extenders, MoCA, whatever, if you can swing it.

 

[zandor]

Yes wired backhaul is always the best answer, be it with mesh units, extenders, MoCA, whatever, if you can swing it.

That's just it. If you can swing it. Renting? Depends on your landlord. Finished basement or no basement & no way to pull cable without tearing drywall apart? Maybe not worth it. On that note going through an attic can work. Ceiling RJ-45 ports are only a little weird, could be worth putting up with. Ceiling install would make me want to use an actual access point. Lots of those are designed for a ceiling mount and look like a smoke detector.

 

[Sycraft]

Also just in general with all this, the better solutions matter more if you are doing something that needs high latency and/or low bandwidth. If all you want is web surfing and maybe some HD video streaming, pretty much anything works. Even if you end up using 2.4ghz backhaul shared with the clients, you still probably have enough bandwidth for that to be fine. However if you are gaming, you probably want the latency as low (and stable) as possible and every WiFi step is worse for that. A WiFi hop adds at least 2-3ms of latency, compared to maybe 100 microseconds or less for gig ethernet. Also WiFi just has more jitter and is effected by collisions so has more variability, particularly when sharing backhaul and fronthaul on one radio. Likewise if you are doing big downloads and what them to be fast, you need wired backhaul and good signal on the AP.

That's what pushed me to upgrade my network. My girlfriend wanted fast and reliable wireless to the NAS, and we upgraded to a 2gig network and want that on WiFi. To do that, you have to use 6Ghz, which needs to be pretty near the client because it is short range, so lots of APs, and you need good wired backhaul.

That's just it. If you can swing it. Renting? Depends on your landlord. Finished basement or no basement & no way to pull cable without tearing drywall apart? Maybe not worth it. On that note going through an attic can work. Ceiling RJ-45 ports are only a little weird, could be worth putting up with. Ceiling install would make me want to use an actual access point. Lots of those are designed for a ceiling mount and look like a smoke detector.

An option in that case which isn't pretty but works is just to use cable staples to put it up along the edge where the wall meets the ceiling. I've done that before and it works. Yes you'll see a wire running but it isn't the biggest deal. We actually do that in our house now with the fiber optics going from my desktop to the TV. Getting in the ceiling to re-run cables (which is where the ethernet cables travel) is way too much of a pain. So we just run it up there. It's visible, but not a huge deal.

 

[zandor]

Also just in general with all this, the better solutions matter more if you are doing something that needs high latency and/or low bandwidth. If all you want is web surfing and maybe some HD video streaming, pretty much anything works. Even if you end up using 2.4ghz backhaul shared with the clients, you still probably have enough bandwidth for that to be fine. However if you are gaming, you probably want the latency as low (and stable) as possible and every WiFi step is worse for that. A WiFi hop adds at least 2-3ms of latency, compared to maybe 100 microseconds or less for gig ethernet. Also WiFi just has more jitter and is effected by collisions so has more variability, particularly when sharing backhaul and fronthaul on one radio. Likewise if you are doing big downloads and what them to be fast, you need wired backhaul and good signal on the AP.

That's what pushed me to upgrade my network. My girlfriend wanted fast and reliable wireless to the NAS, and we upgraded to a 2gig network and want that on WiFi. To do that, you have to use 6Ghz, which needs to be pretty near the client because it is short range, so lots of APs, and you need good wired backhaul.

True. It really all depends on what you want/need. My WiFi is way slower than my internet connection. I have a couple WiFi 6 APs that top out at an 80MHz channel width on 5GHz. That's not going to hit 2.1 Gbps, but I don't care because my rigs are all wired so WiFi is just for phones, streaming gizmos, etc. Once in a while I use WiFi with a laptop, but if I need speed I can just plug it in. 2019 WiFi 5 laptop can hit 600 on WiFi, so good enough most of the time. I think the theoretical max on those is ~1.2Gbps, but you never actually get that.

An option in that case which isn't pretty but works is just to use cable staples to put it up along the edge where the wall meets the ceiling. I've done that before and it works. Yes you'll see a wire running but it isn't the biggest deal. We actually do that in our house now with the fiber optics going from my desktop to the TV. Getting in the ceiling to re-run cables (which is where the ethernet cables travel) is way too much of a pain. So we just run it up there. It's visible, but not a huge deal.

Another option is those 3M "Command" hooks. Back when I was a renter I used those a lot. Plastic hook, sticky foam pad between the hook and the wall, just pull on the tab on the end of the pad when you want to remove it. The pad isn't reusable. At any rate they worked great for me. Stick pretty well and didn't do any damage when I removed them. So good for renters or temporary installations.

 

[Sycraft]

True. It really all depends on what you want/need. My WiFi is way slower than my internet connection. I have a couple WiFi 6 APs that top out at an 80MHz channel width on 5GHz. That's not going to hit 2.1 Gbps, but I don't care because my rigs are all wired so WiFi is just for phones, streaming gizmos, etc. Once in a while I use WiFi with a laptop, but if I need speed I can just plug it in. 2019 WiFi 5 laptop can hit 600 on WiFi, so good enough most of the time. I think the theoretical max on those is ~1.2Gbps, but you never actually get that.

Yep, all about what you use WiFi for. Like mostly I just use it on my phone for scrolling so for that, even an all 2.4ghz network with no wired backhaul would be fine. Sub 100mbps is fine for just basic surfing. The only real concerns are gaming, where you need low latency but not particularly high bandwidth, or if you do large file transfers.

One thing I will note not so much for OP but for you is that I do see slightly better ping times on 6GHz. It isn't much maybe 1ms, but it does seem to be faster if that's something you care about. Wired is about 3ms to Century Link's local speedtest node, 6Ghz is about 5ms, 5ghz is about 6ms. However that is with a WiFi 7 AP and NIC, and 10gig wired backhaul. I won't say it is particularly worth that money for optimization unless you just like new toys, as I do, or there's some other reason.

Another option is those 3M "Command" hooks. Back when I was a renter I used those a lot. Plastic hook, sticky foam pad between the hook and the wall, just pull on the tab on the end of the pad when you want to remove it. The pad isn't reusable. At any rate they worked great for me. Stick pretty well and didn't do any damage when I removed them. So good for renters or temporary installations.

Yep those'll work. Also if you need to go through drywall you can just drill through, a 1/4" bit is enough for CAT-6 and it is easy to just put a little putty in and paint over the holes when done. Depends on what you are comfortable with. If not going under the door works, then up along the door frame. I had to do a lot of that back in the day because while I wasn't renting, I was in a condo with no attic, no basement, and I wasn't willing to rip up shit and do drywall. WiFi was garbage back then so my only option was running cables. It worked. These days I still insist on wired whenever possible. WiFi sucks a lot less, but it is still just issues that wired isn't.