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Forum Discussion
Daisy Chaining Extenders?
I have AT&T Uverse, incl. internet. I am using a NETGEAR Model EX6400v2 mesh WiFi extender to let me go online out in my room, since the AT&T router's WiFi signal doesn't reach out here or, when it does, it's usually so weak as to be unusable. The AT&T router is in the main part of my house. Between its location and my room, there are about 12' of indoor hallway and about 80' of outdoor carport, and there are lots of obstructions (stone exterior walls, sturdy wooden doors, and 4 cars). So I placed my extender in my room. It seems that no matter where I position the extender in my room, the Router Link LED lights up solid green part of the time and solid red the rest of the time. When it's red, my connection speeds are very low, typically about 45KB/sec. What can I do to improve my extender-to-router connection? Can I daisy chain 2 extenders together? Supposedly, my Uverse internet has a top speed of 100 Mbps, which is about 12.5 MB/sec. Let's say it's usually permitting a download speed of about 70% of the max., or about 8.75 MB/sec. Using one extender drops that down to about 4.38 MB/sec. A second extender drops that down again to about 2.19 MB/sec., which is still a little faster than the fastest download speeds I have seen using just the one extender with a poor connection much of the time.
5 Replies
Can you daisy chain extenders? yes.
Should you? Debatable.
Reason why is standard single/dual band extenders drop throughput by 50%. this happens because they have to use the same chip to go router---->extender and then extender------>device. And they can't do both at once. so it cuts speed in half. And thats half of what it recieves. So if its already at a decreased signal because of distance/obstruction/interference, that 50% can be more significant.
If you have to do this, you'd want to try to use a triband extender to be the middle device. the tribands have a dedicated band for just router---->extender. This helps keep that speed reduction down. but it still increases latency.
We usually don't recommend this because it can still be a bit unstable.
If you're needing more than 1 extender, we usually recommend moving to a full triband mesh system like orbi or the MK83 nighthawk.
Thanks very much, plemans. I will look into the orbi and MK83 Nighthawk options.
Thanks again, plemans, for your previous reply. The orbi system and the Nighthawk MK83 system both use Wi-Fi 6. I have read that 6 GHz Wi-Fi is not as good at penetrating obstacles as 5 GHz, which is not as good (for this purpose) as 2.4 GHz. I have serious obstructions. Do yoiu think Wi-Fi 6 will be a problem?
There's a difference from wifi 6 to wifi 6e.
Wifi 6 is just 2.4ghz and 5ghz
wifi 6E uses 2.4ghz, 5ghz, and 6ghz. The 6ghz doesn't have the broadcast power/penetration power that 2.4ghz/5ghz does.
