wifi repeaters or range extenders

[Iain McFadyen]

I have used both.

I had a WiFi 802.11b repeater in the early days. You configured the
upstream side and downstream side completely separately: The downstream
side was given different channel, different SSID, and different security
from the upstream side. I liked it, and it worked really well for several
years. No trouble at all till I moved it outside. After 1 or two days I
think I baked it in the hot Jamaica sun. It still continued to work with
full functionality, but the power output was so intensely reduced that you
had to be within a few feet of it for it to work. Think I fried the
transmit 'finals', or perhaps open circuit antenna connection to the PCB or
similar..

I recently bought an 802.11n extender. You configure it by connecting on
channel 1 with the admin SSID and password, you tell it the target upstream
SSID/channel, and the moment it finds the target upstream signal, it drops
the admin channel and immediately starts rebroadcasting all packets from
the target upstream access point, on the same channel, with the same SSID
and security features. I got it working, but I personally found it really
frustrating to setup. 6 weeks later, the IT department provisioned another
access point in my corner of the office, and there was no further need for
the extender.

So now I have a Linksys RE1000 sitting idle in the box.

For me, the repeater seemed easier to configure and use than the extender.

Iain
Port of Spain

On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 1:00 PM, <tacos-request at amrad.org> wrote:

>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. wifi repeaters or range extenders (Terry Fox)
>    2. Lightsquared: The end of the story? (Iain McFadyen)
>    3. Re: wifi repeaters or range extenders (Artie Lekstutis)
>    4. Re: wifi repeaters or range extenders (Bob Bruhns)
>    5. Re: wifi repeaters or range extenders (Richard O'Neill)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2013 06:48:17 -0400
> From: "Terry Fox" <tfox at knology.net>
> To: <tacos at amrad.org>
> Subject: wifi repeaters or range extenders
> Message-ID: <A9BB93AA603841A6B5F60C78D2FA8C7D at tfoxserver3>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>         reply-type=original
>
> Has anybody messed with wifi repeaters or range extenders?
>
> I'm going out of town to a place where there is a very marginal wifi signal
> inside a garden-style condo, from an adjacent building.  The wifi is open
> BTW (no wep, wpa, etc).  I was thinking of putting a wifi range extender
> just outside the condo, so the signal inside the condo is stronger.  Do
> those things work?  I don't plan to do any banking or ordering of stuff
> while using this open wifi, just a little surfing.
> 73, Terry, WB4JFI
>
>
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