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Range extender/AP confusion - need advice

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kneo

Occasional Visitor
NOTE - Am a novice and understand networking basics only. TIA

I am currently using N66U which unfortunately located in one corner of my small rectangular apartment (700 sq ft). We have concrete walls back in India so wifi does not transmit well (especially 5GHz). My 2.4Hz works well when all doors are open and if I go to the other end of the apartment, the speed drops. I have a 40 Mbps connection and in the room where I have the router, the speed is quite good but at the other end it drops to around 25 Mbps. To solve this, I have a powerline adaptor running to the first room for my entertainment device but due to noise and circuit breakers, it too drops to 25 Mbps.

Now I am planning to check whether I can increase the range of my current wifi itself (and maybe also have an option to create an AP via the Powerline). I have two products TP-Link TL-WA801ND and TP-Link TL-WA855RE shortlisted. Which is recommended? I am thinking that with the smaller 855RE, I'd get flexibility to place it at different locations and it also has an ethernet IN to be used via powerline (can someone confirm this?).

Would upgrading the router itself from N66 to a NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1900 or maybe even an X6 improve the range itself?
 
Most unfortunate that service providers often put everything in a remote corner of the house. What you might try is taking a length of Ethernet cable and simply extend your N66U off the floor and further down along a wall bringing it closer to the center of your apartment?

Since putting a device on your powerline didn't work well I wouldn't think putting an AP on the powerline would work any better?

You're looking at single band (2.4 GHz) range extenders. The rule of thumb is speeds are "halfed" but half of what? You know your Internet speed is 40 Mbps but what is the speed of your WiFi? If your good room is only 50 Mbps you're not going to be happy with "half". If your good room is 100 Mbps then you've a fighting chance. (Put a PC on Ethernet, a laptop on WiFi and run speed tests between them.)

A dual band (2.4 and 5 GHz) range extender would allow you to dedicate one radio as the backhaul to the router allowing for greater speeds (by eliminating the "halving" effect) but 5 GHz fighting with your concrete walls would require careful planning.
 
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You have a few options.

1) Upgrade your powerline adapters to AV2. Check the powerline ranker for our test results.

2) Upgrade to a four-stream router (AC2600, AC3100).

Don't buy any more N products. If you upgrade, buy at least AC1200.
 
What you might try is taking a length of Ethernet cable and simply extend your N66U off the floor and further down along a wall bringing it closer to the center of your apartment

Unfortunately back here in India our houses typically have concrete walls and granite tiles which are not easy to replace. It's almost a permanent installation!

1) Upgrade your powerline adapters to AV2.

Would the existing noise on the power cables not be an issue? The existing 40Mbps is not much right which my TPlink powerline cannot handle.

Don't buy any more N products. If you upgrade, buy at least AC1200

This is interesting. I was thinking that my current N router would be a bottleneck and even if use AC router my source router is N and would not be able to push as much data to the downstream router. N66 has merlins firmware and stability is quite good.
 
Unfortunately back here in India our houses typically have concrete walls and granite tiles which are not easy to replace. It's almost a permanent installation!
What I meant was simply lay it on the floor as close to the wall as possible. Use a flat wire or molding to dress it up a little.
 
What I meant was simply lay it on the floor as close to the wall as possible. Use a flat wire or molding to dress it up a little.
Oh okay. Unfortunately that option too is not feasible - had thought about it initially.

An update. I found an old Linksys E2000 lying at a friends house. Plugged in the ethernet out of the powerline and disabled the DHCP on it. I now have another access point. But it has it's own SSID and I have to manually switch between the two. My main N66 has a threshold but it's not working as expected. Sadly the Linksys is a very basic router and does not have modes for AP/Bridge, etc.

Is that discussion appropriate for this forum or should I move on queries about that to a different forum (maybe the Asus section)
 
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