What is the optimal distance to place airport wireless extendor from AirPort Extreme base?

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Sf2018 Author

Level 1

8 points

What is the optimal distance to place airport wireless extendor from AirPort Extreme base?

Hello, I have an AirPort Extreme wireless network currently placed in a bedroom (lower level) of a two story house. The signal was not strong enough for my upstairs corner bedroom and downstairs family room. So I purchased 2 airport express wireless extenders. I have placed one extender in the bedroom next to my desktop and run an Ethernet cable hardwired to it. I have place another wireless extender next to my smart tv in the family room and run an Ethernet cable harbors to it also. Recently a Comcast tech came over for another issue and mentioned the extenders are too close to the devices using them and to place them away. First of all, is it true that you would get better connection if the wireless extenders were further away from the devices using them? Secondly, is there an app or method to find out the optimal distance these extenders should be place from the base? Lastly, do I need to configure my network to run on separate bands and connect to the better band that performs a better speed test? Or simply leave the dual band setup and allow my devices to connect to the best band? I really appreciate anyone's help on this as I'm supposed to be getting 100mpbs speed with Comcast and I'm only getting about 30mbps most places in the house. Thank you.

iPad Air Wi-Fi, iOS 10.3.3, Using PC, iPhone, iPad

Posted on Jan 20, 2018 9:38 AM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

157,896 points

Jan 20, 2018 1:13 PM in response to Sf2018

You are very welcome! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

In the mean time, let me see if I can help answer some of your questions:

First of all, is it true that you would get better connection if the wireless extenders were further away from the devices using them? In general, you want to place the extender within the wireless range of the base station that you want to extend. The tip should help you with the best placement based on the signal quality of the station being extended.
Secondly, is there an app or method to find out the optimal distance these extenders should be place from the base? Again, the tip should provide you with a number of ways to determine this.
Lastly, do I need to configure my network to run on separate bands and connect to the better band that performs a better speed test? Or simply leave the dual band setup and allow my devices to connect to the best band? It is important to understand that the higher bandwidth (5 GHz) signal will have much more difficulty penetrating through things like walls. Basically, this band works best when both the wireless access point and the wireless client are in the same room.
Another important consideration is bandwidth. An extending base station can only extend the wireless network with the bandwidth that it receives, even if the extending station can provide a "stronger" signal. If overall bandwidth performance is important to you, you may want to consider using a roaming network configuration instead. This type of network pretty much eliminates the bandwidth issue of an extended network, but does require that base stations are interconnected by Ethernet ... or where Ethernet is not possible or practical, you could use Powerline adapters instead. These create a pseudo Ethernet network using your home's electrical circuits.

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