[SOLVED] Extender/Repeater plus a Wireless Bridge in One?

[Matthew Forish]

I am wanting to find a good, reliable device that can act as both a WiFi Extender or Repeater, as well as a wireless bridge to attach via Ethernet cable to a PC that does not currently have WiFi capability. (I could easily get a cheap Wi-Fi card for it, but I figured if I could find an inexpensive solution, I could kill two birds with one stone.)

My router is in the front room of my house, and I get a pretty good signal (my old laptop labels it as excellent) at the back of the house where the non-WiFi PC is going to be located. I also want the bump the signal at that point so as to extend coverage to my back yard, so that I can stream music more easily back there among other things.

Is there a decent, and reliable device that anyone can recommend that will allow me to do the above, without breaking the bank? (Somewhere in the $20-$50 range.)

Bonus points if it is available from Amazon, as I have a gift card to spend there.

 

[bill001g]

Any so called repeater/extender with a ethernet port will do that. Maybe look for one you can turn off the repeater function and just use it a wifi bridge when you do not need the signal outside.

Just having a repeater in your network will greatly degrade the speed. It transmitting that extra signal uses up radio bandwidth and also causes interference since it is basically transmitting the same signal back to the router.

Best if you can only use the repeater function when you really need it.

 

[Matthew Forish]

Would an Extender that uses a different network ID cause the same interference? Is it possible to put them on different channels to alleviate this?

I have limited knowledge of networking, so forgive me if my questions are basic or misinformed.

 

[bill001g]

Almost all require you to run them on the same radio channel and same SSID. Some but not all the new mesh units have a different radio to talk to the main router to partially reduce the interference.
The problem is there just is not enough radio bandwidth because of the new radio encoding. There is only room on the 2.4g band for 1 40mhz radio and there are only 2 80mhz blocks in the 5g band.

Your problem is the amount of money you are willing to spend. The best option would be a pair of powerline network device and a cheap AP plugged into the remote unit. This way you get the best of both. A good connection to the router and a wifi source that is independent of the main router....although the radios will still interfere somewhat

 

[Matthew Forish]

OK. Thank you for the insight.