A Wi-Fi extender will cut your speed in half. A mesh system satellite has a separate backhaul channel so it runs at full speed. I use the Netgear Orbi which gives me 4 ethernet plugs at each router . It has worked out flawlessly for me and sped things up greatly when accessing my NAS and streaming services. It's a pricey unit but it is fast and reliable.
Mesh network versus a simple Wi-Fi extender
In anyone’s experience, does implementing a pricier Mesh network yield any sonic advantages to just using a good Wi-Fi extender and running a good Ethernet cable from that? From people who have very good streamer setups it seems like using a simple but good Wi-Fi extender from TP-Link etc. is more than fine. Thoughts?
Showing 2 responses by grover30
@soix There are 2 different speeds when dealing with wireless routers. There is the internet speed that you pay for from your ISP and then there is the wireless speed in which your computer, streamer, wi-fi extender, etc. connects to your main router. For example, an Orbi AX4200 has a 5ghz max connection speed of 1200Mbps, but a real world speed of maybe 8 or 900Mbps depending on how close you are to your router and if the connecting device (computer, streamer, etc.) even supports that speed to begin with. So then if you connect a wi-fi extender, it's only going to have a max connection speed of 4-450mbps. Even if you only got a few hundred Mbps speed, that still is more than enough to stream music. It's nice to have a fast in-home network connection for copying files between different computers, accessing files on a NAS and so that you are getting the full internet speed that you pay for. It can become very confusion and I hope I made it easier to understand instead of harder. |