Powerline Accesspoint (really just the AP part)

[NismoZ]

I've got a Linksys EA8500 that does a great job at floor 1 and 2 of my house. I've got it located on floor 1, but where it sits, it has to go diagonally through several walls and even the AC ducts to my basement couch. I get a 5GHz signal there, but not by much, and occasionally, it drops.

Because of the location, I can get a CAT5 cable down there and was wondering if something like this would work. Setup as an AP, not an extender...

https://www.tp-link.com/us/products/details/cat-5508_RE350.html

The way I understand it, is plug it into power in the basement, then run the CAT5 cable to it, and set up as an AP. Once I do this, will it use my current SSID from my upstairs router so my phone can roam to it while in basement? Will this work out well, or when I walk downstairs, will the phone not really move over to that AP by itself?

 

[umarmung]

Why bother with an extender when you can get a real AP, e.g. a TP-Link EAP225v3.

Give it the same SSID password as your router, but put it on a different channel and low its transmit power (preferably lower transmit power of router too) so that it roams more easily.

If you need DFS channels, get a Ubiquiti Unifi AP instead and do the same.

 

[NismoZ]

Why bother with an extender when you can get a real AP, e.g. a TP-Link EAP225v3.

Give it the same SSID password as your router, but put it on a different channel and low its transmit power (preferably lower transmit power of router too) so that it roams more easily.

If you need DFS channels, get a Ubiquiti Unifi AP instead and do the same.

With any AP, I would have to do some tweaking to get the phones to roam to different points. Most likely would have to enable "Allow WiFi Roaming Scans" in Android developer options to make it work right. I think that effects battery, so I really didn't want to do that.
It's funny how all this researching triggers your mind to think of things you normally would not have. I must have moved the EA8500 around bunch of times and either still didn't get WiFi well enough to my basement location, or if I did, then upstairs wasn't good. Because of the odd things the signal has to go through diagonally to the basement, I put the EA8500 in a place that out of site/thought in my office (where it's always been). That location improved the basement negotiation from 40-97mbps (where it occasionally dropped) to 195-234mbps. Upstairs it still good as well (in the 500s mbps) so it looks like I won't have to deal with adding a device into the mix.