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Installed wireless extender, now wireless internet is slow?

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blampert

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Currently have a Asus RT-AC68U router in the house. I also have a Dropcam that I use. (You'll see why i'm mentioning this as I go on.) I use to have it setup in the house, with no problems. I moved it to the outside garage, which had a weak signal from the router. To fix this, I purchased a Asus 3-in-1 router (RT-N12) and went through the basic instructions on setting it up as an extender. Having no more issues with the Dropcam in the garage with bad signal now Wireless internet is slow. At first I thought it was just one of those slow internet days TWC has, but it didn't go away. As soon as I turned off the extender, speeds were back to normal. Turned it back on, speeds are slow again. Am I missing something? Any ideas on what it might be?
 
When you say extender, is this the same as repeater mode? That will make all your wireless devices slower, but it shouldn't affect your ISP speeds (unless you're testing from another wireless device).

Can you run a LAN cable to the RT-N12 instead?
 
a WDS repeater, aka Wireless Extender, halves the "throughput" between client and server on the two WiFi links.
HOWEVER, if the halved speed (net yield) is higher than the ISP service speed, no harm done.

This assume the repeater/Extenders works correctly with the client and with the WiFi router. Many don't. Esp. mixed brands or product era products.
 
Thing with WiFi - it's not just about bits, it's about Time...

A repeater uses twice as much Time on a channel - it needs to talk to the remote node, and transmit/receive frames from the primary AP... and this is time that other nodes can't use... it's a share medium with all nodes on the BSS...

This is why a repeater impacts the entire network, and the more nodes that are attached to the repeater, the bigger the impact...

If you can't drop ethernet, then try homeplug's...
 
a WDS repeater, aka Wireless Extender, halves the "throughput" between client and server on the two WiFi links.
HOWEVER, if the halved speed (net yield) is higher than the ISP service speed, no harm done.

This assume the repeater/Extenders works correctly with the client and with the WiFi router. Many don't. Esp. mixed brands or product era products.

Actually in some ways it can be worse. If the wireless signal isn't great even with a repeater, then you are talking up twice the "talk time" at a much slower "talking rate". That doesn't leave a lot of airtime for other clients. With a streaming device like a wifi camera, that is going to be going full time and not intermitent will make it worse.

As a fun experiment, I've tried two wireless tests, one with my laptop in the same room as my access point and my tablet in the same room. Started a max download test from my server on both. Individually the tablet can do 84Mbps and my laptop 214Mbps on 2.4GHz 40MHz. With both rocking and rolling I got 60Mbps and 152Mbps. I then moved my tablet across the house and repeated the test. The tablet ended up getting 18Mbps and my laptop got 67Mbps (the laptop stayed in the same room as the access point).
 

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