Quote:
Originally Posted by Rtrorkt
had been told by the Best Buy geek extenders are stretching the slgnal making it moderately acceptable everywhere. He counseled against an extender. Sounds like the coax based answer might be the way to go
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Extenders work but you have to think about how they work.
Draw a circle then 5 more equally spaced concentric circles around it. Number them 100, 80, 60, 40, 20, 0 with 100 being the center. 100 represents strongest signal, 0 is nothing.
Draw the same thing next to it.
Slide them over each other and the deepest penetration represents the strength of the repeated signal.
Meaning, the extender can only repeat what it can receive.
In theory the only way to get 100% is to stack them on top of each other.
That's OK because WIFI can move way more data than most residential broadband supplies. It's only an issue if you need to move large amounts of data that originates inside your network.
If it can pass 300mbps second and overlap at 50 that's still 150 mpbs and if your broadband connection is 75 mbps you have overhead for two devices to fill the pipe. Actually less but that's the general idea.
The other thing to consider with WIFI extension is the overhead.
Imagine 2 guys, guy number 1 has to fill a bucket from a trough then pass it to guy number 2 who dumps the contents into his trough. Guy 1 has to know the exact number of drops in the bucket and let guy 2 know. Guy 2 has to confirm the number of drops he received and report back. If 2 got less than 1 sent then 1 has to send the missing drops.
The drops are data packets being transmitted.
When extending wifi you add a third guy into the mix. He has to receive from 1, dump into his trough, refill a new bucket from the trough and pass to the next guy. In addition to confirming how many drops he got from guy one he has to inform the next guy how many he sent. He's effectively doing the work of both the other guys combined at the same time.
It's twice the work and one of the reasons that wifi extenders can lose up to 50% of the throughput.
Trust me, the MoCA adapters work.
They are really just a cable modem set up to function in a different mode.
As long as the coax in your house is in good shape you'll get the same exact performance as if you'd moved the cable companies router to that location.