Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - How to get good wifi in a Lantana home?
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Old 12-17-2022, 07:35 AM
PoolBrews PoolBrews is offline
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Extenders automatically cut your internet speed by 50%. This is because the extender takes whatever bandwidth you have and uses half for receiving and half for sending. This is true for all extenders. As long as your initial speed is good, they may work, but the more of them you use, the worse the impact. In addition, the extender sets up a new network (even if it's the same name). If the network is on the same channel as your primary router (or another extender), they will interfere and cause dropped packets and performance issues.

The best solution is to use a mesh wifi system, and to ensure that they include a backhaul radio. A backhaul radio handles all transmissions going back (i.e. sending), and leaves the original bandwidth for downloading (i.e. receiving). This is the only method of having multiple wifi points without impacting performance and also ensures you don't get interference as the units are designed to get unique channels when used together.

I know that Netgear Orbi and eero have backhaul. If you start reading reviews of mesh systems, you'll find that the Orbi consistently wins for both coverage and speed, but you can't go wrong with either. Stay away from Google Nest - many performance issues.