Wifi Extender + Ethernet or pci Wifi adapter?

[Terminator_]

Just a quick question
Should I buy a 5ghz Wifi Extender and then connect my ethernet cable from it to my pc? Or should I install a 5ghz pci wifi adapter into my pc
I am about 10-12m away from my router so I'm not sure whats best
Router does 5ghz and my Pc's ethernet can also recieve it
Just not sure which option would be best
Cheers

 

[bill001g]

Although they call the device wifi extenders what you need is a client bridge. Just be sure that the device can run in that mode and make sure you disable the wifi repeater function since it degrades performance and you are not going to be using it.

The internal card would likely be a little cheaper. The key disadvantage to internal pci cards is their antenna are located very close to the metal case of the machine. It blocks a lot of the signals. You would want the back of your machine to face the router if possible. They do make extension cable to extend the antenna out from behind but it increase the cost.

You should get good performance from either but it greatly depends on how strong the signal is and that will vary from house to house.

 

[vmfantom]

Just a quick question
Should I buy a 5ghz Wifi Extender and then connect my ethernet cable from it to my pc? Or should I install a 5ghz pci wifi adapter into my pc
I am about 10-12m away from my router so I'm not sure whats best
Router does 5ghz and my Pc's ethernet can also recieve it
Just not sure which option would be best
Cheers

Not knowing specifically which models you're looking at, or which router you have, a range extender would imply receiving 50% of less of the wifi throughput coming from your router, since the extender duplicates the packets without doubling the channel bandwidth. 12 meters is 68 dB of attenuation at 5 GHz, but the funny thing about free space loss is that most of that attenuation occurs in the first meter. If you had two links (router to extender, then extender to PC) spaced at 6 meters, you'd have 62 dB of attenuation on the first link, and then 62 dB of attenuation on the second link.

A PCI wifi adapter in the PC would at least bypass the halving of throughput that range extenders cause. And if you pick one with detachable antennas, then you can upgrade to higher gain antennas if needed. Just match the stream count and modulation between the router and the PCI adapter, so that if your router is 3 stream MIMO at 256-QAM, you should get a PCI adapter that's also 3 stream MIMO at 256-QAM. wikidevi.com is your friend when looking that stuff up.

Keeping your router unchanged and assuming it has detachable antennas, the alternatives would be (in order of cost, lowest to highest): Adding higher gain antennas, sending wifi over home cabling, or adding an amplifier (booster).