Are WiFi repeaters really that bad?

[waltervl]

It all depends on the repeater. But by design it will drop the bandwidth. Another possibility is to use a power line extender where you use your existing 220V powerlines to transfer network signals and put an extra wifi access point in a 220V socket.

[Toulon7559]

Cabled ethernet generally always faster than airborne Wifi.

Assuming you have main router with built-in ethernet-switch with multiple LAN-ports, use the old router as an extra access-point:
bandwidth-wise better than repeater-mode.
Old router in role of extra access point for it's ethernet WAN-port needs a cabled or quasi-cabled link to an Ethernet LAN-port of your main router:
Powerline is not as good as 'real' cable, but second best, applying the Mains-grid in your appartment, avoiding laying of extra cabling:
beware that (usually) the Powerline-connection works best if both entry and exit are on the same phase of the Mains.
If your old router has built-in multi-port ethernet-switch, for ' same price' also some cabled ethernet-interfaces near the new access point, not consuming capacity from the wifi.

[lost]

Am I better off going back to using my wireless adapter with unreliable WiFi? Will using the repeater cause problems down the line? Is there anything else I could do with my old router to improve my overall performance?

If you can't wire easily from your cable router to your PC, as others said you'd better set 2 powerline devices. If your PC have a RJ45, you may wire it directly to powerline. If you need wifi, you may wire your old router and use it in AP mode instead of repeater.

Some powerline adapters also include a switch to provide several RJ45. This way, you may use a wired connection to your PC + another for your old router in AP mode.

Just take care that issues may arrive if you use many powerline devices (especially from different brands/generation, even if they should be compatible): Just before my holidays in June, all my IP cameras (at the time using powerline, as well as a second wifi AP under my roof+playstation near TV) started to disconnect frequently. 1 adapter among 5 proved misbehaving, this was quite difficult to figure-out which one was messing on the line affecting stability of all of them.

Issues may also come if one adapter is on a plug feed by one row of your main switchboard and second on another plug feed by another row: This means you'll usually cross 2 ground fault breakers (one per switchboard row), thus cause heavy attenuation of powerline signal resulting in poor bandwith and/or link stability.

Also avoid small powerline adapters if you can: This kind of device, especially those allowing highest bandwith, heat quite a lot. In a small enclosure they fail early.

In the end, I started cabling all my house after years of powerline: A switch in the basement and a few drillings to ground floor to wire all devices there + 1 cable to the roof able to feed 2nd wifi AP reliably for upstair devices allowed removing all powerline stuff.

[StephaneM60]

Hi,

I keep reading about how awful WiFi repeaters are

like the other contributors said, it depends on your actual router and repeater.

If you want an ananlogy to understand what's going on : Wifi is like a one way street (it can have more than one lane though, but assume there is only one lane). The network traffic is like cars, if you have one car on the road, you can't have another one (even in the opposition direction).

So when using a repeater, instead of two cars using the road (your PC and your router), you add another one : the repeater. So you are reducing the traffic on the road immediately (up to 50%) because every trip your PC car is making, the repeater car will do the same. The more device cars you have on that road, the more congested the road will be.

That's why it's usually better to not use them and the proper way to extend Wifi coverage is to wire a new acces point to your router, the wire could be an Ethernet cable, a power line etc... as all other contributors advised you.

However : be careful when adding another access point. If your apartment is not huge, chances are great that wifi coverage of the router and the AP will overlap : and your are back to the one road problem, if router and access point use the same channel... so you have to make sure to use a different channel and choose the location with the least overlap.

Also : sometimes it's only your router that is really bad at Wifi, especially it this router is the one offered by your ISP. Upgrading to a new router can solve the issue, and if you can go with a mesh solution (wifi mesh is like adding a wired access point, instead wireless, it's better than repeater, because each access point is aware of each other and know how to share Wifi optimally; often they use a dedicated frequency to talk to each other, so they eliminate the one road problem, by using two or threed roads)

[FireWizard]

HI, All

Please Stop Spammers!!

Check: memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=33115

1. First time post.
2. Joined 7:19
3. Last active 7:20
4. Message is 0ff-topic and no relation with Domoticz.

Impossible to post such a topic within 1 minute!

They use your valuable time.

Regards