Suggestions for extending wireless network

[riccochet]

Hey everyone,
I was hoping to get some advice on what device/setup i should be using to extend my wireless network. Just to give you a bit of background, i have been dealing with wireless issues in my house for a while now. Currently i have a Linksys WRT1900AC as my primary router (in my utility closet in my basement), connected to the internet via a 100mb fiber connection. This is connected to my CAT5e wired home network thats plugged into a DLINK DGS-1100-24. Most devices run over this wired connection, and since swapping out my 10/100 hub with the DLINK gigabit switch, i have enjoyed the massive performance increase. I was also using an asus RT-AC56U as an access point to extend my wireless range to my upstairs as the single linksys wasn't really able to push the range quite well enough to my upstairs computer room. I ran into a lot of conflicts using the second access point. I was having a lot of issues getting devices to connect stably to my wireless. The biggest issues i was having was with my sonos setup (8 zones) disconnecting and becoming unavailable every 20 mins or so. Working with sonos "support" (note the use of ironic quotes), we basically figured out that the whole sonos system was getting confused about what wireless network to connect to (which confused me since it was supposed to be running on its own mesh wireless network and i had it on a completely empty channel). Also, i live in a detached house and my neighbors wireless networks are barely visible (lowest signal strength possible), so i don't appear to be having any kind of wireless network conflicts.
Long story short (although i guess its actually just getting longer at this point), i have everything working fairly stably at this point by running just the linksys router and the sonos system running in a hybrid wired/wireless environment.
The only issue i'm having right now is the wireless range. the 5GHz radio is just not quite able to reach the top floor and outer rooms in my house. The signal strength from the 2.4Ghz radio is good, but the speed isn't really ideal.
Previously, i had the router and the access point configured with the same SSIDs and they were on seperate channels, i set them up with the same SSID since i have people in my house that really wouldn't have the knowledge to be checking their wireless connection to make sure they are connected to the wireless network with the highest signal strength. It also just becomes a mess of SSIDs in my house and i want to make it (appear to be at least) as simple as possible.
The kind of traffic i have running over the wireless network is mainly web browsing, with some light video streaming. I run all my serious media streaming (HD video) running over my wired network all plugged into dedicated HTPCs running plex server on a dedicated 72TB file server.
Can anyone suggest what i might use or configure as a wireless range extender that compliments the Linksys WRT1900AC and would be able to be configured seamlessly? Of course, i read about the suggestions to just install ANOTHER WRT1900AC, but that is pretty costly and seems like a bit over kill since I find my range is just not quite good enough with the one. I also would prefer to run something as an access point rather than just a wireless repeater as i have a wired CAT5e run precisely to the point i would need the second unit to go. Is there any benefit to running something as an AP versus a range extender (repeater)?

 

[thiggins]

You want to use a wired AP to extend a wireless network. Wireless extenders cut throughput in half due to using the same radio to receive then transmit each packet.

Newer dual-band extenders let you use one radio to connect to the base router and the other radio to connect to clients. But then you need to decide which radio does which. And you may not have dual-band clients to work with. And you have throughput loss due to the wireless connection.

You have tried the single SSID approach and found your devices aren't smart enough to choose the better AP. So you'll need to use different SSIDs for your second AP to get them to connect where you want them.

 

[azazel1024]

My suggestion is this. If the Sonos has to connect wirelessly in ANYway. Setup a guest SSID on the router/AP just for it and then setup a unified SSID for everything/everyone else between the router and the AP.

I am leaning in that direction for my wife as she facetimes like crazy and often walks between floors all the time, which causes the connection to drop when it roams between the router and the AP (nothing else is bothered by roaming between WAPs, just facetime). So I am thinking a guest SSID on my upstairs AP just on the 2.4GHz network and just putting her phone on it. Leave everything else the way it is.

Coverage in my basement is less than ideal, but it is more than strong enough for facetime (2-3MB/sec minimum on 2.4GHz from the uptairs AP in the worst spot on the basement...of course that is compared to 24MB/sec at best with the upstairs AP...upstairs).