Ethernet from Wi-Fi extender to Laptop, will it increase my speed?

[dean1000]

Hi, I am living in a building with many other people and we all use the wifi. The signal in my room is always excellent (5 bars) however the speeds I am getting are always slow and often the connection will drop.

I was recently getting double the speeds I am now, until new routers/extenders were installed in the building and now my speed has dropped right down again.

I get much higher speeds when I am other areas of the building, but when I am in my room the speed is rubbish. The guy in the room next to me has the extender for our side of the building and the signal is good, but still can't get higher speeds even though we are subscribed to a high speed broadband package.

If I were to buy an extender for my room, and connect to it through our wireless connection and use an ETHERNET cable from it to my laptop, would that make a big difference to the speed? I am not able to run an ethernet cable from the main router in the house, as I am too far away.

Thanks

 

[Scottray]

Speed is always going to be determined by the slowest path. Another extender/access point in your room will add delay because it's another device on the network and it has to "talk back and forth" to the router. Hooking it up to your PC via a ethernet cable is not going to make a difference.

What may help is if the landlord installed a wifi access point closer to your room that is hardwired to the main distribution switch. The other issue is that the internet bandwidth/speed that the landlord is paying for is not high enough for all the usage in the building.

 

[dean1000]

Hi, thanks for the reply. I was really hoping an extender in my room would do the trick but it appears not : ( Is my only option then for a higher speed is to perhaps buy my own mobile hotspot with a data sim? You mentioned access point, what exactly is this? I noticed on one of the extenders I was looking at buying said it's possible to connect it by access point. Are there any tips on what can be done to possibly improve the speed, I have tried a few things like updating my wireless card but that did not work. The speed just seems to drop in my room only, as soon as I move elsewhere in the building I get the higher speeds.

 

[Scottray]

I think that what you're calling an extender is actually a wifi access point. Meaning, it's wifi transceiver thats connected to the router using an ethernet cable. The problem sounds like your room just doesn't have good coverage from the nearest wifi access point. There's not much you can do about, other than discuss it with the building owner. Since new equipment was installed, maybe it's under contract with the installer. The building owner needs to arrange for the wifi coverage to be improved to your room.