Recommendations on the best wifi extender that has great receive and transmit

[mslisaj]

My neighbor and I are sharing our cable internet connection via wifi. I'm about 300' from the router and get a decent signal in my home and am using a cheap, no name wifi extender that is doing the job. However I would like a more reliable connection and I am looking for suggestions on the best out of the box wifi extender that has great receive and about 700mW transit power which would fill the corners of my 1400 sqft home. 300mbps through put is fine and all I would need is a single 2.4 GHz signal. I realize that the better units transmit 2.4 and 5.0 GHz but that is not a necessity and also have a faster throughput but my needs are basic; I'm just looking for a basic solid connection. I have kind of zeroed in on the Netgear Nighhawk EX7000 and looking for other suggestions or recommendations. Ease of setup is not a necessity as I can use the GUI in a browser. Cost isn't a barrier either as I just need the best unit I can get to receive and retransmit the signal. Any suggestions or recommendations? Any thoughts on the piece of NetGear Nighhawk equipment I have mentioned here?

Thanks so much for your help and recommendations.
Regards,

Lisa

 

[kanewolf]

The best option is to use a PAIR of outdoor wireless bridge units, like these https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833168116 set up a point-to-point wireless 5Ghz bridge, then bring the ethernet inside to a 2.4Ghz WIFI source.

 

[gregjar]

The challenge seems to be twofold. It's inefficient to send Wi-Fi 300 feet via omnidirectional antennas, and the signal attenuation once inside your house requires its own solution. You could consider pairing outdoor/window-mounted panel antennas, or ideally Yagi directional antennas with 20+ dBi of gain, with a little cabling from the antenna to the router. On your end, you'd want to get an inexpensive router set to bridge mode for your neighbor's SSID. The benefit of that versus an extender is that you can choose a router with adjustable output power, and you'd also not be sending private stuff on your neighbor's local area network.

On the inside, even a range extender with external antennas may have too much free space path loss to adequately cover your home. I'd recommend using a Coaxifi kit (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Coaxifi-Whole-Home-Wi-Fi-over-Coax-Router-Range-Extender-4-Antenna-Kit-/182644528792) with a bridge-mode router that has a detachable antenna port. That will let you distribute the Wi-Fi signal throughout your house using your coaxial cabling to each room, without zapping your brain with additional radiated power.

 

[boosted1g]

It is impossible to get 300mbps throughput on 2.4 band with a wifi repeater. Reason being is that once you relay the signal with a repeater your speed gets cut in half. So even if you can by pure magic actually get 300mbps signal strength to the repeater, its output would at best be 150mbps.

That nighthawk range extender wont give you much of any improvement for the money because it still has the same limitations as the other repeaters.

If you want a reliable connection you need:
Your own router (this also protects you from the neighbors computers being able to access/infect yours)
Directional Ubiquiti bridge/a.p on neighbors roof hardwired via ethernet to their router
And another directional ubiquiti bridge a.p. on your roof hardwired via ethernet to your router.

I understand that this is a $300 investment and is running cable which you probably don't want to do.

Bottom line is simple, free internet, reliable --- pick 2
Reliable and free internet - then do what is suggest above
Simple and free internet - do what you are doing now, you can drop $100 on the nighthawk but don't expect $100 worth of improvement
Simple and reliable - get your own internet connection