Heh. You seem to have it sorted now, but I typed this out before I noticed, so posting it anyway...
Quote:
Originally Posted by rnln
I heard that mesh is just simply the same as signal extender except that it can have multiple one so it can cover more areas. The losing speed over the wireless connection is still there.
Mine current one can be set up as an extender or access point, but for some reasons, when I set it up as an access point, I don't gain speed at all. Therefore, I am thinking about getting a new/better access point.
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1. You can have as many signal extenders as you like. If you set them up with the same SSID/password, "roaming" between them is seamless. Or you can choose to set them up with any SSIDs/creds you like. Not sure of the appeal for that - any half-decent router allows network segregation to different VLANs, eg to land different WiFi SSIDs/networks on different physical interfaces/networks.
The only thing "special" about "mesh" setups, is that they may provide a dedicated backhaul channel for them to communicate directly without consuming "user" bandwidth. (This might be part of the reason they call them "mesh" setups, dunno - all my extenders, and about 100% of the corporate WiFi networks I've dealt with are hard-wired because allowing C&C on a WiFi interface is just opening an totally unnecessary attack surface).
Which segues neatly into:
2. If your WiFi extender isn't using a hard-wired ethernet connection to the router AP, then, if a single connection is pushing the wifi connection to full chat, 50% of the wifi bandwidth is occupied by your device "talking" to the AP - and the other 50% is used by the extender AP relaying your packets to the router AP.
And yes, if one of your user devices is doing that - and the extender doesn't support MU-MIMO - then any other users on the same segment are going to be pretty ticked while that is going on. Because without MU-MIMO, WiFi has to use CSMA/CA (radios are half-duplex - can't listen while transmitting or vice versa) - and have wait for a gap, or "quiet time", in the traffic to send a packet.
So pull some cat5/6 and connect the extender directly. Then the WiFi connection will have the full wifi bandwidth it's capable of shared purely between user devices - for the given connection type/quality (dependent on the radios and chipsets available on both sides, as well as where you are physically relative to the AP).
Which isn't to say that a modern WiFi AP as an extender wouldn't provide massively better performance, compared to what you currently have. Beamforning, bandsteering and MU-MIMO are all technologies - along with faster radio specifications/protocols - that your older AP may simply not have, depending on just how old it is. Even the number of MIMOs in the chipset the device it built on affects the maximum number of simultaneous (as opposed to sequential) radio conversations it can support.
Always given that your device actually "roams" between the WiFI APs correctly. There are plenty of utilities to show wifi connection strength, channel and the MAC of the interface you're actually connected to. I mention that because I've seen some (usually older) devices that tend to hang on to an existing connection to an SSID despite there now being a closer/stronger one with a better S/N available that they could seamlessly switch to - but choose not to.