Do Wi-Fi extenders work?

[Darrell KSR]

They are sending a technician out. Said 50% packet loss. Have no idea what that means. Sounded bad.

[badrose]

Did they check it outside or did they have you run something?

[Darrell KSR]

Checked it through their computer system while I was on the phone.

[badrose]

They'll check their connections outside then check your speed on the inside after that. It might be all on their end.

[dan_bgblue]

They are sending a technician out. Said 50% packet loss. Have no idea what that means. Sounded bad.

That is bad for sure. Just imagine a plane trip to LA. The packets are your luggage. You put 10 of them on the plane and only 5 arrive in LA

[Darrell KSR]

Hopefully it will fix something and the new router I get tomorrow will help with the reception to various areas in the house, too.

[PedroDaGr8]

They are sending a technician out. Said 50% packet loss. Have no idea what that means. Sounded bad.

50% packet loss is exceptionally horrible. A strong healthy connection will have less than 1% packet loss, if not a fraction of a percent.

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[Darrell KSR]

Great--hopefully they can fix the packet loss thing, I get my new router in tomorrow, and then I'll be cooking with gas after Tuesday.

[CitizenBBN]

Coming late to this D, Sorry.

One thing you can do is test hardwired if possible, through the router. That eliminates the wifi part of things and will tell you more about whether it's in the router. Ideally just test hardwired right to the modem direct into a computer, then through the router hardwired. Then you'll know exactly what is wrong, it's either the router, the modem or the routher's wifi.

I won't be a bit surprised if it's your internet/modem. My time warner here is really inconsistent, drops all the time even on business service. their modems are junk too.

[Doc]

That is bad for sure. Just imagine a plane trip to LA. The packets are your luggage. You put 10 of them on the plane and only 5 arrive in LA

That good for DELTA

[Darrell KSR]

Lol Doc.

I'm at home with the technician. He scoffed at the person sitting in the office telling me there was a 50% packet loss. Says he looks at the same thing they do and they can't tell that. He then connected, sent 10,000 packets, and not a single one was lost.

He's now checking the outside connections and believes they are probably OK, based on how I describe the issues. Just eliminating all the possibilities before arriving at what he surmises is the issue - modem, in a hardware/software dual issue. Apparently they had several software updates to their modems in the last few weeks, and sometimes it doesn't take properly. So the idea here is to check everything, and probably replace the modem, and see if that is a fix.

Will update....

[Darrell KSR]

Modem replaced, everything fixed.

[Darrell KSR]

And the rest of the story.

After the modem was replaced, it remedied the problem of internet being down, or for all intents and purposes, being down. Tech guy was right, it needed a new modem.

Still sporadic and slower than it should be speeds throughout the house, so at that point, we replaced the router with the one Pedro mentioned above from T-Mobile/Asus. What a difference.

We had no, or virtually no, wi-fi coverage downstairs previously. It didn't matter that much because we had an ethernet cord hard-wired downstairs so it worked in the only place that was a regular user of it.

Now getting about 20 Mbps download and 6 upload in places where there was no coverage before. That's amazing. The limit for our area with Charter Cable is 60 (I get 64 in the immediate vicinity on wi-fi), but 20, for our purposes, will work fine.

Haven't tried any of the cell phone features for wi-fi calling (we have T-Mobile as our cell phone provider) yet, but happy the Asus router is better than the one they provided.

[kingcat]

Late to the party as usual gang!

Extenders in general just don't work like advertised.. Not sure how that relates to WiFi however

[PedroDaGr8]

And the rest of the story.

After the modem was replaced, it remedied the problem of internet being down, or for all intents and purposes, being down. Tech guy was right, it needed a new modem.

Still sporadic and slower than it should be speeds throughout the house, so at that point, we replaced the router with the one Pedro mentioned above from T-Mobile/Asus. What a difference.

We had no, or virtually no, wi-fi coverage downstairs previously. It didn't matter that much because we had an ethernet cord hard-wired downstairs so it worked in the only place that was a regular user of it.

Now getting about 20 Mbps download and 6 upload in places where there was no coverage before. That's amazing. The limit for our area with Charter Cable is 60 (I get 64 in the immediate vicinity on wi-fi), but 20, for our purposes, will work fine.

Haven't tried any of the cell phone features for wi-fi calling (we have T-Mobile as our cell phone provider) yet, but happy the Asus router is better than the one they provided.

Thats great to hear, 20Mbps is still a solid connection. I am glad that it is working MUCH MUCH better.

Truthfully, there are some new technologies that are starting to come onto the market that might be useful in the near to distant future but they are a little too nascent for me to recommend them yet. Google Wifi and Plume are two examples. Too new, too many bugs, I imagine in 3-5 years those technologies will be what ppl are using around their houses to ensure a solid connection.

[Darrell KSR]

This is 45-50 feet away, other end of the house, same floor.

[PedroDaGr8]

This is 45-50 feet away, other end of the house, same floor.

That is downright excellent! I can't even get those speeds now from my ISP (stupid Comcast)

[Darrell KSR]

Remind me not to complain when my speed slows down.

Sitting in a McDonald's in Bay Minette, AL (close to Mobile). Here's my blazing speed for my "Edge" network I get here (4 bars!) and McDonald's own Wi-Fi, compared to the most recent at home.

Sigh.

[KSRdallen]

Thats great to hear, 20Mbps is still a solid connection. I am glad that it is working MUCH MUCH better.

Truthfully, there are some new technologies that are starting to come onto the market that might be useful in the near to distant future but they are a little too nascent for me to recommend them yet. Google Wifi and Plume are two examples. Too new, too many bugs, I imagine in 3-5 years those technologies will be what ppl are using around their houses to ensure a solid connection.

Returning to your comments here, Pedro. After reading extensively and talking with our univeristy CIO, I decided to go with Google WiFi. It’s transformed our signal and consistency of it throughout the house. The only thing I don’t like is not being able to adjust the channel of each mesh unit. Fortunately, the two farthest units have found a channel other than the one other WiFi system I can see (my neighbor, who appears to be using an extender ). Since there’s not been any apparent channel conflict issue so far, even that hasn’t been an issue. I’m very happy with the mesh system.

[PedroDaGr8]

Returning to your comments here, Pedro. After reading extensively and talking with our univeristy CIO, I decided to go with Google WiFi. It’s transformed our signal and consistency of it throughout the house. The only thing I don’t like is not being able to adjust the channel of each mesh unit. Fortunately, the two farthest units have found a channel other than the one other WiFi system I can see (my neighbor, who appears to be using an extender ). Since there’s not been any apparent channel conflict issue so far, even that hasn’t been an issue. I’m very happy with the mesh system.

Yep, the mesh routers will handle all of the channel allocation and point-to-point routing on the fly. THis allows them to "work around" issues which might pop up suddenly (like a cellphone in the house that suddenly turns on its WiFi access point). They have grown leaps and bounds since I made my comment and now would heavily recommend them. The Google WiFi is basic but good, there are some higher power ones which are double or triple channel units. Overall, these are MUCH MUCH better devices for homes than the traditional router because you in essence customize the wifi coverage to the shape of your house.

[KSRdallen]

Yep, the mesh routers will handle all of the channel allocation and point-to-point routing on the fly. THis allows them to "work around" issues which might pop up suddenly (like a cellphone in the house that suddenly turns on its WiFi access point). They have grown leaps and bounds since I made my comment and now would heavily recommend them. The Google WiFi is basic but good, there are some higher power ones which are double or triple channel units. Overall, these are MUCH MUCH better devices for homes than the traditional router because you in essence customize the wifi coverage to the shape of your house.

I looked at the other ones that have more bells and whistles, but the costs were going up in comparison. The Google system seemed a good middle ground. Thanks for the follow up!

[blueboss]

I bought a Net Gear N300 and it works fine. I needed to boost the signal for an outdoor security camera at the rear of my house. I’m getting crystal clear vids after hooking it up.


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[PedroDaGr8]

Returning to your comments here, Pedro. After reading extensively and talking with our univeristy CIO, I decided to go with Google WiFi. It’s transformed our signal and consistency of it throughout the house. The only thing I don’t like is not being able to adjust the channel of each mesh unit. Fortunately, the two farthest units have found a channel other than the one other WiFi system I can see (my neighbor, who appears to be using an extender ). Since there’s not been any apparent channel conflict issue so far, even that hasn’t been an issue. I’m very happy with the mesh system.

FYI for all, Amazon has the Google Wifi 3-pack for $212 right now.

https://www.amazon.com/Google-WiFi-s...dp/B01MAW2294/

it says $250 but will drop to $212 during checkout.

[KSRdallen]

FYI for all, Amazon has the Google Wifi 3-pack for $212 right now.

https://www.amazon.com/Google-WiFi-s...dp/B01MAW2294/

it says $250 but will drop to $212 during checkout.

Nice PSA. Sorry I didn’t wait!

[Darrell KSR]

I don't know what it is, but I couldn't see how to buy it anyway.

Sounds like something I could use, two upstairs and one downstairs, maybe? My house isn't big.

[PedroDaGr8]

I don't know what it is, but I couldn't see how to buy it anyway.

Sounds like something I could use, two upstairs and one downstairs, maybe? My house isn't big.

To explain the difference between these (MESH network) and WiFi Extenders: WiFi extenders are in essence just "rebroadcasters" and end up using half of the bandwidth of the network to do so. Think of them like that chatty person at work who blabbers everything they hear. They spend half their time listening and the other half spreading it. Anything that comes in, goes back out.

Mesh networks on the other hand, are made up of a number of essentially tiny "smart" access points called nodes. These nodes communicate with each other and establish a separate channel between themselves to manage data transfer (rather than rebroadcasting). The individual nodes talk to each other via this backend and the whole network decides on the fly the fastest and most efficient way to route the data to you. Furthermore, unlike WiFi extenders which repeat everything they hear, only the data that needs to leave said node gets sent to it. They are more like the normal desirable information flow at work. Those that need to know are connected to whom they should and get only the information they should, without all of the other garbage. This is much more efficient both from a network usage perspective, but also a flexibility perspective. They are honestly the best design (so far) for a high performing home network.

On that flexibility note, you are not limited to just the two or three nodes you get in a pack; you can add as many as you want. Though signal interference can limit this to around 6-15 in a limited area. That being said, this means in difficult environments (like a concrete block building, long building, multiple floors, etc), you can add more nodes to ensure seamless coverage. This gives you the flexibility to tailor the network coverage strength and shape to the needs of each person/situation.

[CitizenBBN]

Mesh is the way to go. I'm not up on what's available for residential/consumer use in that area, but we built our commercial stuff using mesh. We built our own boxes with routerboards and wifi cards, put in 9dbi antennas and we were getting 4 watts equivalent power, the max allowed by FCC on those frequencies. Could get over a mile line of sight.

Then we set the routerOS to run mesh, so you plug them in and you get instant network.

Anyway, I just installed a new ubiquiti unit in our building that has a whole node management system going on. I only needed the one, but ubiquiti makes top notch stuff and it was off the shelf. But it does take more skill to setup. Now they run the thing with an app that's powerful but you can't work without it either, so it's good for company stuff but not for simple home networks. If they popped up and connected and you ran that would be good, they don't do that.

But yes, if there's a consumer unit that's mesh it's the way to go.

have I waxed rhapsodic enough about wifi yet? I think I need a brain....