[SOLVED] Which one is more favourable - Extender or Access Point?

[ArjunY]

I hope this finds you in the best of health and spirit. 😀

So I was planning to purchase a TP-Link AC750 Wi-Fi Range Extender RE200 for use in my parent's office.
However, I was wondering which one of the above-mentioned options would be suitable in order to utilize the device to it's fullest potential. For context, I intend to plug in the extender a room away from the router, and then use the 5Ghz mode of the Wifi network for the following devices:

1. Plugging in an Ethernet cable into the device, and connecting the other end into my PC in the same room (to retain the speed)
2. A couple of Mobile Phones
3. Another Wi-Fi enabled desktop (Lenovo ThinkCentre mini workstation)

I'd be glad to receive your valuable input.

 

[bill001g]

It is not a AP unless you cable it to the main router. When you run it wireless you are running as a repeater. This has many downsides and you should do it only as a last option.

Plugging your pc into the repeater with a ethernet cable likely will not help. It would be much better to have the pc connect directly with the main router via wifi. When you connect the computer to the repeater via ethernet it really is not much different than using a USB wifi nic card. If your PC currently gets bad signal in the room the repeater will also get a bad signal and then degrade it farther.

There is a large difference between the raw signal level and the actual quality of the wifi signal. If it gets bad data from the main router in the very best case it will just be equal but in almost all cases it makes it worse.

The proper placement of a repeater is 1/2 between the router and remote room but it takes some experrmenting.

If you have not purchased the device I would look at moca units if you have coax or powerline units from the newer AV2-1000 and av2-2000 series. You would then use a AP or a old router running as a AP to plug into these devices if you need both ethernet and wifi in the remote room.

 

[Krotow]

RE200 is poster child in WiFi mesh world. I have this extender by the way. Too simple to be proper WiFi extender (seems it transmit and receive in same channel, no reason to use 2.4 GHz as uplink to cripple 5 GHz speed too) and can't work as auxiliary AP due to lack of PoE and slow Ethernet port (only 100 Mbit). Have better build quality than Chinese noname extenders, but that's it. No reason to waste money. If you can't install Ethernet cable between primary router and your location, use powerline adapters - they will work better than RE200 and similar things.