Extreme speed loss after installing extender

[kristofferleines]

Hey, I recently bought a new router, which provides 500mb upload and 500mb download when cabled from the router to my computer. Using wireless connection from the router I get 400-450 on both up and down. But that’s only if I’m in the same room, as soon as i leave the room it drastically falls. Therefor I bought an TP-Link Re200 Extender.

As soon as I connected the extender to my router, I noticed that both 2.4G and 5G had an extreme speed loss, even though the extender was about 1meter from the main router. I think it was around 20mb up and down, but even less when I went out of the room. Therefor I thought about using an ethernet cable between the router and extender. It worked, but not as much as I would like it to. Now the 5G from the extender is about 70mb up and down with ethernet between router and extender, and me sitting close to the extender with only one device connected to the internet.

The main router wireless only covers 1 out of 5 rooms in the first floor, so I would like a lot more out of the extender to cover the rest of floor 1 and the 4 rooms in floor 2.
What more can I do to get the most out of my extender?

 

[kanewolf]

The wired port on that TP-Link device is 100Mbit so you will be limited to 90Mibt when using it wired to your primary router. To get better performance, you will need different hardware.

 

[failboat]

what's your client and device that gets you 450? it's probably 4x4 mu mimo tri-band or near that.
the extender might not even be AC or very low AC. check the AC number against your other device and look up some of the potential specs.

some of the wireless mesh systems will do a lot better but they won't hit 450 or close to that.

if you want equivalent speed in another area you will need to get another similar spec AP and wire it back.

bandwidth drops exponentially when you get further away. so to hit 450 you will have to be really close.

Running wires is much better for fixed devices that need the high bandwidth.

 

[kristofferleines]

So my best solution would be upgrading to mesh? I’ve already been reading a lot about it.

But as I mentioned earlier, it’s really bad wireless from the main router everywhere except in the same room. Let’s say I got 10 up and down from the main router in the kitchen, would I need to place one of the mesh nodes in the same room as the router and another in the kitchen?

 

[failboat]

You can read reviews and see tests on here for a lot of products.
I'd only recommend mesh if you can't get wires anywhere.

depending on your current router, the mesh base may be much slower.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/wifi-system/view

with good coverage in your house you should get 30+ everywhere. with mimo a little more.
a lot more with direct line of sight and little distance/congestion. the dropoff is huge with wifi.

wireless mesh uses other channels to relay data. so it congests your wifi a lot, because all your channels are being used at each point.
with wired APs you can use different channels in each area.

running cat6a is going to keep your LAN up-to-date for decades. a $500 wifi system will probably be replaced every 4-5yrs.
interior drywall isn't that bad to open and patch. a professional can run wires then patch it and you can't tell they did anything.

 

[kristofferleines]

Not sure if i understood. I should go for mesh, but use ethernet to all of the nodes and use different channels for each one? How much could loss of data could I expect with that solution?

Thanks for all the answers by the way, appreciate your time!

 

[failboat]

Not sure if i understood. I should go for mesh, but use ethernet to all of the nodes and use different channels for each one? How much could loss of data could I expect with that solution?

Thanks for all the answers by the way, appreciate your time!

I'd go with AP's over the mesh system if you have wires.
There are more options.
if you can wire the most important stuff then the wireless speeds may not be as important.

30-45% speed with direct line of sight very close.
5-10% through walls.

It's up to you to pick running wires or not. wireless mesh is the only decent option with no wires.

one of the newer powerlines to an access point might work. that site has powerline reviews.
you can't predict how those will be.