are wireless range extenders worth it?

[arronleeds]

before anyone asks, my dad cant use a different router on his isp as theyre tw@s and have a different encryption to other isps like bt and talk talk  (hes on sky), well he can but..... he has to have certain routers and they have to have firmware flashed onto them and its too costly tbh. 

 

he lives in a flat and the layout of it basically eliminates wireless in one of the back bedrooms (sucks for me) and his internet speed in his room drops from 38 down to like 5 down. im not even joking i can get 4/5 bars signal if i go out of the flat and about 20 metres down the road, yet cant get a signal about 5 metres down the hall in my room when i stay .

 

he was planning on getting a 300mbps extender and putting it in the hallway and then using a wifi adapter in his laptop as the laptop only does 144mbps wireless (old 2nd gen i5 laptop) and that will also be 300mbps wireless.

 

do you think it will help guys.

[Rheinwasser]

it the layout of the flat doesnt reallly allow for wireless an extender wont help much. extenders can be great, but stay away from the cheap ones. have you looked into homeplugs?

[Lord_Karango17]

The range extender should help, but what is the point of getting a wireless adapter for the laptop if the down/ up speeds are not anywhere near its 144 mb/s limit (unless you have centralized storage like a nas or something that would benefit from the increase to 300 mb/s)

[arronleeds]

he has homeplugs but his wiring isnt that great and hes also fussy, he bought them for his tv originally. he bought a wifi adapter and it did help, he was only getting about 29mbps down on his laptops wireless where as now he gets 36mbps down with the wireless adapter, it just drops completely off in my room and almost completely in his room and thats why he wants an extender.

[Blebekblebek]

you can use another router

 

mostlikely you just need to clone the MAC Address

 

it's hard to estimate about wireless setup

despite having 300mbps wireless setup, real time bandwith is far lower than those numbers, my 300mbps connection only received about 6-8MB/s max (that's about 54-75mbps)

more devices using the wireless, less bandwith you will receive.

 

extender only provides better coverage but will not improve bandwith you can received or whatsoever.

[arronleeds]

he can use another router but it has to be supported by the MER encryption, sky use MER, bt, talk talk and the others use PPPoA. theres not many routers that support MER and even with the ones that do, theyre expensive and also some have to have custom firmware on like merlin, he would also have to get a modem and he doesnt want to spend too much money.

 

hes not really bothered about the speeds in his room or mine, he just wants better wireless coverage.

[JefferyD90]

If you cant use another router then you cant use a range extender unless your ISP offers it.  Did you mean you cant use another modem, cause that could be easily solved.

 

Anyways as long as latency isnt a huge priority then yes, range extenders are amazing.  But they can cause additional latency spikes.  If you look into a good one though it will keep any hiccups like that to a minimum.

[arronleeds]

of course you can use a range extender with a supplied isp router...... and no i mean you cant use just any router as the isp doesnt allow it, you have to extract the user and password without their permission and then put it into another router. hes on vdsl @ 40 down and 10 up and his current router has a built in modem but it sucks.