Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2020 4:07 Post subject: Extender? or Repeater? .. so confused
Hi guys,
I am running linksys 3200acm 2 routers, wds. Thank you, dd-wrt !!! no problems, however, my kids are bitchin' about the outside internet performance. My routers are great inside, but in the backyard arrghhh !!! Will a cheap ass extender work with the wds system? .. Should I just buy another router? .... greatly appreciate it if you can help me.
Just do repeater bridge, I have routers covering the whole house.
Also you can increase the power of the router, makes a big difference, I'm using 200 instead of the default 74. _________________ Netgear R9000 main router
RAX80 as AP
Rule 2: Too much transmit power is a bug
The great thing about 2.4GHz Wi-Fi is the long range and effective penetration. The bad thing about 2.4GHz Wi-Fi is... the long range and effective penetration.
If two Wi-Fi devices within "earshot" of one another transmit on the same frequency at the same time, they accomplish nothing: the devices they were transmitting to have no way of unscrambling the signal and figuring out which bits were meant for them. Contrary to popular belief, this has nothing to do with whether a device is on your network or not—Wi-Fi network name and even password have no bearing here.
In order to (mostly) avoid this problem, any Wi-Fi device has to listen before transmitting—and if any other device is currently transmitting on the same frequency range, yours has to shut up and wait for it to finish. This still doesn't entirely alleviate the problem; if two devices both decide to transmit simultaneously, they'll "collide"—and each has to pick a random amount of time to back off and wait before trying to transmit again. The device that picks the lower random number gets to go first—unless they both picked the same random number, or some other device notices the clean air and decides to transmit before either of them.
This is called "congestion," and for most modern Wi-Fi users, it's at least as big a problem as attenuation. The more devices you have, the more congested your network is. And if they're using the same Wi-Fi channel, the more devices your neighbors have, the more congested both of your networks are—each of your devices can still congest with one another, and still have to respect airtime rules.
If your own router or access points support it, turning your transmission strength down can actually improve performance and roaming significantly—especially if you've got a mesh kit or other multiple-AP setup. 5GHz typically doesn't need to be detuned this way, since that spectrum already attenuates pretty rapidly—but it can work wonders for 2.4GHz.
A final note for those tempted to try "long-range" access points: a long-range AP can certainly pump its own signal hotter than a typical AP, and blast that signal a greater distance. But what it can't do is make your phone or laptop boost its signal to match. With this kind of imbalanced connection scenario, individual pieces of a website might load rapidly—but the whole experience feels "glitchy," because your phone or laptop struggles to upload the tens or hundreds of individual HTTP/S requests necessary to load each single webpage in the first place. _________________ FORUM RULES
Joined: 14 Dec 2015 Posts: 774 Location: 127.0.0.1
Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2020 8:21 Post subject:
blaser wrote:
Just do repeater bridge, I have routers covering the whole house.
Also you can increase the power of the router, makes a big difference, I'm using 200 instead of the default 74.
Last I knew, you couldn't do that on the newer WRT series, hard coded in the chip. I may be wrong now, but you could get an RE9000 (I find it to be a great AP). _________________ Tutorial for flashing WRT series WRT Installation,Upgrade & Basic Setup–Cliff Notes
r52242: WRT3200ACM, WRT1200ACv1 & 1 Velop in bridge mode(IoT subnet), r52242 WRT1900ACv1 AP
Velop:2 WHW0101, RE6500, RE9000(AP)
Spectrum - 1000/50
SysLog Watcher 5, New security Onion box coming soon, Fingboxes, PiHoles, NEMS, Cacti, rpisurv
Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2020 12:05 Post subject: Re: Extender? or Repeater? .. so confused
roman_legion wrote:
Will a cheap ass extender work with the wds system?
I don't recommend a cheap extender. If an Ethernet backhaul is possible I recommend EX7300 or EX7300v2, otherwise for pure wireless (tri-band, dual ssid, all traffic goes over 5 GHz backhaul so disable ARP spoofing protection) go with EX7500. Try to find one used in your area to save a lot of money (e.g. craigslist, offerup, ebay). Edit: RE9000, thanks ATHF. Also, see EX8000.
roman_legion wrote:
Should I just buy another router?
If you do, go with R7800 (easy tftp flash, newer chipset) or used EA8500 (if you can ttl serial flash). None of above is outdoor.