Has anyone really ever had success with various wi-fi range extenders? I don't think I ever have.
I have in the past had verifiable success with distributing wireless access points around a house, and linking them together with Powerline adapters - though sometimes the Powerline adapters didn't work - that depends sometimes on the wiring and the consumer units. The verification was simple enough - set up the additional access points, then watch a Youtube video on a laptop and walk around. With the extra WAP in place and fed by a suitable link, the video would run indefinitely - or at least for a long while. If the WAP was turned off, or the link broken, then the video would stop once the buffer in the playback app was exhausted. I tried this both with the same SSID on the WAP as the main router, but a different channel number, and also with a different SSID. AFAIK almost all devices would continue to play if the SSID is the same on both the main router and the WAP, irrespective of channel number assignment, and many devices would just switch to the alternate SSID if that had a stronger signal. Sometimes that latter approach does require the user to explicitly force the join to the different wireless network. Either way - it was possible to show that the approach worked.
I would probably rate putting in ethernet cable above using Powerline links, but whether that's feasible depends somewhat on the internal house construction. That might work in our latest house if there are drops behind plasterboard from the loft area above, and indeed it might be better to place additional WAPs above in the loft space.
I have never come up with a convincing test to show that wireless wi-fi extenders work for more than a few hours - if indeed at all then.
The so-called plug and play wi-fi extenders never seem to work reliably - and there's not usually any sensible explanation of how they are supposed to work anyway. After all - most people wouldn't understand anyway, so why bother? If they do work, they perhaps rely on store and forward protocols, so the throughput would be halved - though the factor of 0.5 might be offset by the reduced errors on the outward and onward wireless links.
I don't know whether WAPs with Mimo technology actually use an active protocol with the client devices - it's just possible, though in that case how well they work would also depend on the software drivers in the client devices. There may be some similarity with mobile phones, but I'm not sure how similar phone networks are to wi-fi networks (or vice-versa) of different forms.
I have in the past had verifiable success with distributing wireless access points around a house, and linking them together with Powerline adapters - though sometimes the Powerline adapters didn't work - that depends sometimes on the wiring and the consumer units. The verification was simple enough - set up the additional access points, then watch a Youtube video on a laptop and walk around. With the extra WAP in place and fed by a suitable link, the video would run indefinitely - or at least for a long while. If the WAP was turned off, or the link broken, then the video would stop once the buffer in the playback app was exhausted. I tried this both with the same SSID on the WAP as the main router, but a different channel number, and also with a different SSID. AFAIK almost all devices would continue to play if the SSID is the same on both the main router and the WAP, irrespective of channel number assignment, and many devices would just switch to the alternate SSID if that had a stronger signal. Sometimes that latter approach does require the user to explicitly force the join to the different wireless network. Either way - it was possible to show that the approach worked.
I would probably rate putting in ethernet cable above using Powerline links, but whether that's feasible depends somewhat on the internal house construction. That might work in our latest house if there are drops behind plasterboard from the loft area above, and indeed it might be better to place additional WAPs above in the loft space.
I have never come up with a convincing test to show that wireless wi-fi extenders work for more than a few hours - if indeed at all then.
The so-called plug and play wi-fi extenders never seem to work reliably - and there's not usually any sensible explanation of how they are supposed to work anyway. After all - most people wouldn't understand anyway, so why bother? If they do work, they perhaps rely on store and forward protocols, so the throughput would be halved - though the factor of 0.5 might be offset by the reduced errors on the outward and onward wireless links.
I don't know whether WAPs with Mimo technology actually use an active protocol with the client devices - it's just possible, though in that case how well they work would also depend on the software drivers in the client devices. There may be some similarity with mobile phones, but I'm not sure how similar phone networks are to wi-fi networks (or vice-versa) of different forms.
Yes, I think this may be why my set up works so well.
Comment