Does anyone know the answer to the following: My daughter wants to buy a device to boost our (downstairs) wi-fi signal received in her upstairs bedroom. The device claims it has a range of 1200 ft^2. (I assume this means the device has a span of - or covers an area of - 1200 ft^2.) Assuming the boosting device is omni-directional, this would equate to a radius of about 19.5 ft (ideally). That would be good, but I need to ask:
While I believe this is the distance it can boost a signal, is this ALSO the furthest distance the boosting device should be from the wi-fi source? While it seems logical this would indeed be the case, things aren’t always that simple. Can someone confirm if the source for incoming signal should be no more than 19.5 ft (assuming no losses under ideal conditions)? What does the SDopers say about this?
Note: We already researched our signal speeds of our wi-fi for uploading and downloading. And, we know the device we wish to buy can handle this no problem. Presently, the wi-fi download speed is 100MB/s and in my daughter’s room drops to about 50MB/s). I mention this just in case there are other factors we have not considered, but the SDopers may wish to make us aware. Offhand, I forget the upload speed, although I know it is less than the download speed.)
The distance from the source has nothing to do with how far the boosted signal can go. It has to be within range of the source.
That is, if your repeater (or booster) says it can send a signal 100 feet. But your current wireless access point/router, can only send a signal 50 feet, you still need to be less than 50 feet away from it.
Having said that, if there’s any way you can get an ethernet cable closer to the area you need the new wifi signal to be, getting a wired WAP is going to be your best bet (short of something like a mesh network).
Also, a 19.5 foot radius doesn’t sound right. Are you sure it’s not something like 19.5 meters? If your device can’t transmit a wifi signal more than 20 feet, you should probably look into something else.
Quickly looking online, I do see that they’re about 1200ish sq ft and that would work out to a radius of 19.5 feet. Odd. It looks like the one I have at work is rated for 1600 sq ft, which would be 22 feet, but I use it from much further away than that.
I’m curious if, despite being used as a device spec, it’s one of those things that doesn’t quite mean exactly what it says, or the distance/coverage area is calculated in a certain way that’s not quite as straight forward as you’d think it would be.
There are devices that work as repeaters which you can put between the wifi router and the far end of the the house. They are essentially wifi routers themselves. They connect to the main router and then forward any packets. So if the connection is currently like this:
Do you happen to have an extra wifi router? Many routers can also act as repeaters. If you happen to have an unused wifi router already, post the model number and we can tell you if it can be a repeater.
There are also devices to transmit from point A to point B via your homes AC wiring. You could then send that signal to a WiFi device in your daughter’s room.
People generally know the square footage of their house, so surely the idea is that this description in terms of square footage allows them to pick a suitable router. So I would think a claim to cover 1200 sq ft would not mean a theoretical circle (or sphere, come to that), it would mean a typical realistic house where you can’t place the router in the exact center. I’d expect a router with a 1200 sq ft spec to have good coverage to at least 30ft.
We were in the process of getting/installing a device to extend our home WiFi coverage when a friend suggested relocating our router. I’d never thought of that.
It took 45 minutes to fish around for cables in our basements suspended ceiling. Totally solved our problem.
Yeah, my first choice would always be to get the highest spec router and trying to figure out how to hard-wire it to the optimum location. I’ve always found setting these things up to be a painful process, so there’s a lot to be said for keeping things as simple as possible.
Agreed. They make do wifi extenders which connect to existing wireless networks but you’re better off buying a mesh router. You can get a decent 2 node mesh router for just north of $100, 3 node for $150.
WiFi repeaters work by relaying packets. That means that your plan calls for every byte sent to your daughter’s room to be sent twice over the same network: once from the source to the repeater and again from the repeater to the device in your daughters room. This will immediately effectively halve the maximum available bandwidth, which you say is 100 MB/s, to 50 MB/s, which you say she is already getting. Your best case outcome is that nothing gets better and nothing gets worse.
If you want to see an improvement, consider a mesh system or a wired WiFi extender, both of which also relay the network traffic, but do so in a channel other than the main WiFi network. Or buy a better WiFi router or reposition the one you have.
WiFi routers ALL have a max power output which is regulated by the FCC in the US (other countries have their own regulations). Chances are your WiFi router is already broadcasting at this maximum (the manufacturer has pretty much no reason to have it do otherwise).
So, you can:
Re-position your WiFi router to a better location.
Use a WiFi repeater (note that repeaters cut your total bandwidth in half at the other end but this is usually not a problem in most cases since it is probably still faster than your internet speed).
There are AC adapters that can send the signal through a home’s electrical wiring. I have had zero luck with this (seems more modern homes’ fuse box will filter the signal). It might be worth a try though.
Get a mesh network like Eero or Nest WiFi (or a handful of others). This is the most expensive option by far but also the best solution by far. A mesh network removes all the headaches of having WiFi deadzones in your home and yard. Easy to setup and then forget about it…it does its thing automatically. Again though, expensive. (Personally I think it is worth it since WiFi is so central to the operation of so much stuff in our home but $300+ is a lot.)
To preface - I know enough about this topic to appreciate how little I truly know, so just curious, based on how I read the situation, if they installed a wireless booster in the wall of her room and the signal it was getting was 50Mbs would it not then cut it to a stronger signal, but at 25Mbs, since the booster halves the speed? So she’d be worse off?
It really depends on how much bandwidth she really needs. For streaming and social media, she’s likely going to be fine - none of that is really too intensive bandwidth-wise for an individual. But if there are 20 people all trying to watch their own individual Netflix or Disney Plus streams, it might be a problem. Or if she likes to broadcast uncompressed 8k video from her room 24/7, it might get dicey.
That’s the thing about ‘speed’. Bandwidth numbers are a bit misleading. We rarely fill the pipe. At full utilization, you’d notice a difference, but most people’s casual internet use rarely does that. TV/movie streaming is generally compressed and buffers a little at a time, rather than downloading an entire episode/movie, so it uses a surprisingly low amount of the pipe. So, it makes a difference if you have an entire family each doing their separate thing but it’s less of an issue for a single person.
That’s true, but normally one would install the booster somewhere between the original router and the problematic area, somewhere where the signal was still decent. That’s because the speed of the network where the booster resides becomes the limiting speed for the extension of the network. So, for instance, if the speed is 200 MB/s if you’re smack against the router antenna, 100 MB/s somewhere in the middle, and 50 MB/s in the room, you’d put the booster in the middle area. The booster might then raise the signal strength in the room to permit ~100 MB/s, but immediately double the load on the network for the room’s devices, effectively making the whole path 50 MB/s again.
If what you say is true, is that true for radio repeaters, too? (I have worked under EEs - for I am an ME - with establishing RF connections, although my ME roles brushed on their EE roles). When we needed to add a repeater, I was aware the signal was received on the source frequency and sent out on a different frequency. The rest was a black box to me as I did not need to get down in the weeds on the finer details. Of course, now I regret not learning more. But, my question to you is:
I am aware there are networks of repeaters, say when data was relayed by microwave in a network created by AT&T decades ago (now obsolete). Are you saying the transmission rate drops by half and keeps degrading by half (i.e., 1/2, 1/4, 1/8…) with each subsequent repeater? Surely, the professionals have a way to boost the transmission rate at each repeater? I wager they must else long-distance signal transmissions would have quickly fizzled out. (I know, I’ve gone off-topic, but I am curious having dabbled in the field.) Do you know how they may get around this problem? Does it have to do with the wattages of the booster transmitters, perhaps?
Joey, you are correct. I wasn’t thinking clearly about my situation. Yes, obviously the booster must be within range of the original source. My bad. :smh: Thanks for pointing this out!
Joey, I do believe a subsequent SDoper’s response (a few down from the top of this thread) correctly explains what the 1200 ft^2 rating means. The author of this spec is not thinking technical (i.e., the area covered by an omni-directional antenna [in one plane]). Instead, it is most likely a rating for the layman to easily understand if the unit’s signal can cover the area of one’s house.
Riemann, I do believe you are correct. The spec of 1200 ft^2 is written for the layman to easily see if it will cover their house or not. I am thinking too hard about the area of a theoretical circle in a plane about the omni-directional transmitter. Hence, the resulting value for radius comes up to such a curiously low value. :smh: “Too much mind on the matter…” as Neil Peart of Rush would say. Thanks for pointing this out!
Thanks for pointing this out!