New Wi-FI Router or add an Extender?

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Oily_Thing

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I have a cable modem that delivers around 80mps. I have a dual band gigabit router, and the speed is good in the same room with it, but my Wi-Fi drops speed drastically when I am in another room or part of the house.

Should I invest in a new router, or should I get a Wi-Fi range extender?
 
Do you have both the 2.4ghz and 5.0ghz frequencies set up?

How much of a speed drop are you experiencing?
 
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The lost is relative to your Modem speed.

If you are transferring data among your devices, then, yes a lost of 50% will be substantial.
But if you are just browsing the net, texting, social media using say Smart Phone, etc. then it only needs a good may be 20 MBps which means that you lost about 75% of your top speed.
Even streaming does not need that much data transfer rate unless your streaming service is more than 80MBps.

Just the consideration if you need the extender or not.
 
Sort of a restatement of the previous point. Is speed a problem with you in your real life (i.e. buffering on a Roku in another room?), or are you just bothered because your Internet supplier advertises 80 megs and you think you should be getting it through the pipe because you have an AC1200 router? If you have a room in the back of the house that is really screwed up an extender or mesh type router might be worth it, but the kind of variations you're citing seem reasonable. IIRC the lower band goes farther and slower so stick anything far away on that band and put most of your nearby stuff on 5.0.

Nothing scientific but Amazon testimonials are full of statements like: "Replaced a AAA router with a ZZZ brand router and boy does this thing blast through walls" If they're similar ratings and different brands, can't figure out why the speed up would occur, because I thought the guts of these things were similar-- but you do read it, so maybe....

I bought two gift AC1200 routers for friends and can see no differences between them and my AC1900 router.
 
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Newer routers have better processors and beamforming capability for further reach without additional TX power. If you router is older may want to look into newer ones to addres the issue. If you have lot of SQ/Ft to cover or obstructions then you're getting into repeater territory
 
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Originally Posted by Kawiguy454
Newer routers have better processors and beamforming capability for further reach without additional TX power. If you router is older may want to look into newer ones to addres the issue.



Beamforming is the new hot term in the past few years. Seems like routers are getting more and more antennas as well. Since you have a dual band (I'm assuming AC1200 minimum) router maybe these technological improvements will make a real difference. Also, do these things gradually degrade as they get older? Don't know that one.

Maybe buy a router that doubles as an extender and play around with it.
 
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I hate WiFi extenders. I've never set any up that have worked properly or didn't have some sort of intermittent problem / speed drop etc.

Get a more powerful router or get something like a Ubiquity UAC-AC-PRO Access point which has fantastic signal and mount it somewhere in a central location and run the wire back to your existing router and just turn off the WiFi in your router. It's POE so just a Cat-6 line is enough with no external power needed.

I have their Access Point and it's the best thing I have bought when it comes to this type of equipment. It's 2.4/5 GHz and it supports B/G/N/AC You can also turn on Band Steering so you have one SSID for both 2.4 & 5 and it will negotiate with the device and force it onto 5 GHz automatically if it supports it for better throughput and signal.
 
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Very happy with Google WiFi here.
Got the 3-pack on sale for $219 around the holidays.
It eliminated 2 dead spots on it property and I just don't think about it anymore because it just works.

Highly recommend.
Going for $249 now..
 
Most important answer to your question IMO is:

1. This thing gives disturbingly low numbers when I run Speedtest.

or

2. This thing sucks. My Roku box does nothing but buffer and buffer,

The second one should make you buy something different or relocate your present router.
 
Originally Posted by Imp4
Very happy with Google WiFi here.
Got the 3-pack on sale for $219 around the holidays.
It eliminated 2 dead spots on it property and I just don't think about it anymore because it just works.

Highly recommend.
Going for $249 now..


I was curious about Google's Mesh router. Good to know it's good.
thumbsup2.gif
 
I would buy a mesh WiFi rather than an extender. That would get you all new technology.

I am up to 3 APs in my mesh network.

If I add another that is Ethernet attached then my mesh will be self healing.
 
I would suggest mesh and with your speeds the google wifi offering is simple and easy. If you have higher speeds the google wifi offering is less favorable in the 150Mbps above range.

The nice thing about mesh is you have one wifi network in home and your devices get handed off one to the other. The extenders have trouble handing you off or cannot to the best routers available.
 
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Originally Posted by Imp4
Very happy with Google WiFi here.
Got the 3-pack on sale for $219 around the holidays.
It eliminated 2 dead spots on it property and I just don't think about it anymore because it just works.

Highly recommend.
Going for $249 now..




I second this, Google WiFi is great, and solved all of our WiFi signal issues far better than the previous router and extender.
 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tenda-Nova-Whole-Home-Mesh-WiFi-System-Gigabit-AC-WiFi-Router-Extender-2-Pack/192773597487?hash=item2ce233a92f:rk:1:pf:0

Here you go. A Tenda mesh router for fifty two bucks and change. Put a Tenda AC1200 in my girlfriend's home and it works just fine.
 
If you TRULY need more than what one good quality consumer grade hardware can deliver, don't waste your time with consumer grade range extenders or mesh systems... the best solution is Ubiquiti UniFi. Yes, there is definitely a bit of a learning curve to set up, but it's not that expensive and the results will be so much better. You can either keep your existing router (and turn off its internal wireless) or switch completely to a UniFi system and use something like a UniFi USG as your main router.

I've installed a bunch of these things and they're great. In fact, sitting at my front door right now is an entire new UniFi setup to replace my existing consumer grade router. I'm running the controller software on a cloud server so I can access it anywhere and add other sites/deployments to it if I want to.
 
Originally Posted by Oily_Thing
I have a dual band gigabit router

We would need to know more. Do you have a cheap pre-N dual band router? Or a high end 802.11ac router? Just what is it?
 
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