Wireless extender question

[demodra9]

So I live in an apartment building and the wireless signal from the router is very weak where I am. I would like to install a wireles extender. I don't have access to the router, is that needed in order to connect the extender to the router? I'm basically asking if the extender works like a wireless adapter.

 

[bill001g]

It depends what you are calling a "extender". The stupid manufactures call 3 devices that have different purposes this name.

If you goal is to hook it to your PC via Ethernet cable then this is more correctly called a client-bridge. In a way it runs as a wireless adapter and you do not need access to the router. This will not directly improve the signal levels. What you can do is buy units that have directional antenna to increase the ability to get more signal that may or may not help. Outdoors it works well indoors if is a gamble because most loss is due to absorption of the walls. Of course the other use is to run a long ethernet cable to location that gets good signal and hook it back to the pc. So if you were to put it outside it may help...you would want a outdoor rated bridge unit to avoid destroying it with rain.

Now if what you are calling a extender is a device that take a wireless signal and duplicates it.. that is best called a repeater. Even when these are working in perfect operating conditions you lose 50% of the speed. In your particular case you have 2 large issue. First most DO need access to the router since they are dependent on WDS to function. Even then WDS tends to be non standard. The second issue is that the concept of a repeater does not work. The repeater must be placed in a location it gets good signal and then it will send the signal to a area that has poor signal. If you have no place in your apartment that gets good signal then a repeater has nothing to repeat. If you try it with poor quality signal it will just degrade it even more.

 

[demodra9]

Well I already asked someone who lives closer to the router and they said I could plug it in there. Yes I'm talking about a repeater so now the only question is if I will need access to the router. What causes you to lose 50 percent of the speed btw?

 

[demodra9]

Can anyone give me some more information about this?

 

[bill001g]

If depends on the repeater many run WDS which requires access to router there are some that do not but it is hard to say which do not. You see many posts on this forum from people who cannot make them work for various reasons.

It should be obvious why they lose 50%. They must take the information and retransmit it this is twice the information. In addition since the wireless bandwidth is shared these transmission affect all the users using both the repeater and the main router. This will degrade the performance of the entire system for everyone even those that can get strong signal to the main router. Since interference causes retransmissions when it detects errors you now have the main packet retransmitted plus the repeated copy being retransmitted many times. It quickly degrades into unusable when there is a lot of traffic.