wifi range extender

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lampybc2

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Mar 22, 2011
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Hi All

I currently have a ASUS RT-AC5300 99% of the house is run over Ethernet which works great but we have 1 or 2 HUGE dead spots with WIFI, I have left a couple CAT6 cables and am looking for something that will plug into Cat6 (I have POE if necessary) and give me better WIFI range but still uses the same network names passwords etc.

TIA
 
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Yes, you'd use the WPS button to configure the RP-AC68U. In so doing, your RT-AC5300 would go from supporting up to 1024-QAM and 4 streams (4,334 Mbps Phy rate at 5 GHz) to 256-QAM 3 streams (1,300 Mbps Phy rate) with the RP-AC68U just as a client. Then, as an extender, you'd reduce that another 50%. If adding an extender to the extender, then halve that again. Then reduce the total by around 40% to account for CSMA/CA contention window and duty cycle. The...
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That sounds somewhat similar to what another person with an RT or GT-AC5300 describes at http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3471738/wired-home-orbi-router.html and that discussion might spare you some trial and error. The RT-AC5300 is a beast as far as transmit power goes in general, but it has that second 5 GHz band and it's hard to know which side of the PCBA is up or down. http://fccid.io/MSQ-RTGZ00 shows that the 5 GHz DFS range has 70% of the transmit power of the higher 5 GHz band. You might be able to improve performance by disabling the DFS band in the UI, but it's hard to say which radio chains use it.

Again, though, if you're using a 1 watt router and still have wifi dead zones, then you've got a huuge house and either need enterprise APs that do fast roaming well on a single SSID, or to set up a distributed antenna system somehow.
 
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ok now im properly confused im going to have to do some research, just going to add incase anyone else wants to tune in I have the router in my theater room at one end of the house every other room I have run 3 cat6 cables into each 1 of which is for raspberry pi's so every room has 2 spares which are behind the TV's which I can utilize... The problem I am having is the house is so large and the walls so thick that in the opposite corner of the house there is barley 1 bar of wifi... Problem number 2 we are in a 4G dead zone so in that same spot we have one bar of 4G leaving my wife and kids less than impressed so I am looking for something that will either repeat the range of the router or have phones jump between routers when the signal gets weak, or possible something much bigger for wifi transmitting like an aerial mounted on the roof
 
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So you probably need to use cabling for both cellular and wifi, in that case, maybe even with an amplifier on the cables.

Cel-Fi
WoCA

Or use MoCA to a wifi extender (but then you'd need a different SSID in that part of the house).
 
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after a little research maybe it would be better to just use the ASUS to help manage my wired network then maybe get a uniFi and put it in the middle of the house so I will get WIFI everywhere through the house
 
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Whether that works depends on the square footage, number and type of walls, etc. Your RT-AC5300 has higher transmit power all-around than the UniFi APs (http://fccid.io/SWX-UAPAC , http://fccid.io/SWX-UAPRO , http://fccid.io/SWX-UAP), so if putting the RT-AC5300 in the middle of the house (as a test) doesn't cover the dead zones, then putting a single UniFi AP in the middle of the house would be worse. You'd need to zone several UniFis or use WoCA.
 
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Did you mean, would something like UniFi work, or something else?

Each concrete wall is 10-15 dB of loss, each drywall panel is around 4 dB of loss, and 10 meters is 60-68 dB of loss between 2.4 and 5 GHz. If you start with a router that has 30 dBm of transmit power (1 watt), then you could just barely pass 10 meters of air and 2 concrete walls (if not another building material) to keep your RSSI above -65 dBm for reliable packet delivery, with a total loss of up to 98 dB. The problem is that UniFi APs' transmit power can be as lower at 19 dBm (71 milliwatts) at certain wifi bands, and 19 - 68 - 15 * 2 = -79 dBm, which is above the noise floor for most wifi clients but too weak to avoid packet loss.

10 meters and 2 concrete walls with WoCA would have a loss of only 5-9 dB so that would keep your RSSI considerably higher.
 
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The EX7000 has good transmit power on 2.4 GHz and any wifi channel between 5.745-5.825 GHz (http://fccid.io/PY314200280). It would require separate SSIDs between the main router and the extender, though. Also, since it's an extender, you're getting half or less the throughput of the router, so expect something in the 100-200 Mbps range (https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2478817,00.asp).
 
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Look what I found...

https://www.asus.com/au/Networking/RP-AC68U/

this seems to be telling me with the ASUS extender app it allows me to connect to the extender and the router at the same time.... this would surely give me the best performance all the way through the house
 
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Yes, you'd use the WPS button to configure the RP-AC68U. In so doing, your RT-AC5300 would go from supporting up to 1024-QAM and 4 streams (4,334 Mbps Phy rate at 5 GHz) to 256-QAM 3 streams (1,300 Mbps Phy rate) with the RP-AC68U just as a client. Then, as an extender, you'd reduce that another 50%. If adding an extender to the extender, then halve that again. Then reduce the total by around 40% to account for CSMA/CA contention window and duty cycle. The end result seems sub-optimal for $170 a pop, but on the bright side, it would fit in with the overall color scheme!
 
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