Question Router or mesh suggestions?

[lemonjelly]

Looking for a new Router or possible mesh system for my house. The house is wood framed and about 3000sqft duplex. My internet speed is 400mbps. I use it mostly for light PC gaming, cell phones browsing, and smart tvs 1080p streaming. I'm looking for something that's super simple to use without out much hassle of setting up and trouble shooting issues.

My current router is a ASUS AC1900. The router and modem are located on the farthest west side of the house and wifi is used a lot on the east side of the house. It works mostly fine for my uses but signal can be weak and does drop sometimes on the other side of the house. Also my duplex neighbors also use my wifi and would like to get stronger single in their side of the house if possible.

I have my gaming pc hooked up in the same room as the router and have an ethernet cable running to the pc and one more ethernet cable running through my crawlspace to reach the other side of the house, which I use to plug in directly into my TV for better/more reliable streaming experience.

I figure there's got be something better for this situation. I know a range extender plugged in the ethernet cable on the other side of the house would be ideal, which I had tried but I swear it seems like it just doesn't work as well as just directly plugging into the tv. So I'm looking at possibly getting a different Asus router with wifi6 or possible a mesh system like Orbi? What would you guys recommend?

 

[bill001g]

Not sure what you did wrong when you plugged a range extender into the the ethernet cable.

This is your best solution. Anything else is going to attempt to use a wifi signal for the same purpose as the ethernet cable...to connect to the main router. This can never be as good even if you did it in the same room. The ethenet cable is pretty much immune to interference and has massively more bandwidth.

So did you take the cable that was going to the tv and plug it into the repeater and then plug another cable to the tv. This should perform almost exactly the same as the direct ethernet cable. The repeater is acting as a small switch. Now if you are now using wifi to the tv even in the same room sometimes it can work poorly.

Maybe it is the so called "range extender". Many of these products are junk. Do you have a old router laying around. You should be able to use it as AP. You would also get the extra lan ports for use as extra ethernet ports.

If not maybe buy a inexpensive router, you can get routers similar to the one you have for $50 if you buy brands other than asus.
You can then use this router as a simple AP.

Running a remote wifi source off a ethernet cable is always the best option to extend ethernet. You should never use any kind of mesh or repeater systems when you have the option to use wires. Now mesh and repeater systems can connect to ethernet but you are the paying for software function you do not need and can get cheaper by using a router or a actual AP.