This article explains 3 ways to extend your home wifi range. We are living in times when your internet at home should be available at all the rooms. With the advancement of technology, a lot of connected devices are now present at your home like smart TV, laptops, smart devices, mobile etc. For better coverage at home you can use the 3 different setups mentioned below.
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1. How to extend home wifi range with access points
Ensure that all the rooms have physical cabling with the room where the main wireless router is kept. Purchase access points at each of the rooms where wireless connectivity is required. Connect the access points to the appropriate network outlet at each of the rooms extending from the main router.
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Setup review
The performance of the network would not be degraded using this setup since the access points connect to the main network using physical cable. The devices in each rooms should connect to the access point placed in the specific room for the best performance. This would require the user connecting appropriate access point in the rooms and reconnect to different access point when in a different room. This could be a minor irritant.
2. How to extend home wifi range with Extenders
Use extenders in rooms which require wifi connectivity. The use of extenders would not require physical cabling as in the above setup. Extenders communicate using wireless technology with the main router and are basically signal repeaters.
Setup review
The performance of the network would not match with setup 1. In setup 1, the access point is connected to the main network using a physical cable, whereas , in this case the extender connects using the Wifi channel which could degrade the performance. But, if a physical cabling is not possible, then purchasing extenders prove to be a viable solution.
3. How to extend home wifi range with Mesh routers
Upgrade your router with mesh routers. Mesh routers comes as packs of 1,2,3 etc and you can purchase it based on the size of your home. Setup the main router to the internet and associate the other routers in the respective rooms with the main router.
Setup review
The best performance is achieved with mesh routers. Mesh routers create a single network with a unique name. You would not need to change the wireless network names, when you move around the house as the hopping between devices is done automatically. Mesh routers also provide excellent wifi signal quality and eliminate wifi dead zones.
Verdict
If budget is not a constraint, the recommendation would be to replace your existing router with mesh routers. If you want to avoid cabling, extenders would be a better choice. But the performance may be low , when compared with a physical cabling setup and access points.