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Forum Discussion
NETGEAR Mesh Range Extender EX7700
Would this WiFi mesh extender work with a xr450 and if it does will it be better than using a power line adapter in a house with older wiring. I’m am currently using the XR450 with a power line adapte...
its a very loaded question. many things influence wireless within a home. If you're house wiring is older because its an older house, some houses used to use plaster lathe with metal backing. This does a great job of blocking wifi.
What materials is your interior walls in your home?
How large is it?
does your pc have wireless? With gaming, the key is latency. Adding a 2nd hop (router-----extender----pc) might make it worse than going just router-----wireless pc.
Plus extenders are great for getting rid of dead spots or extending reach but a lot of times, if its an area that already has coverage, it doesn't increase speed.
so its tough for us to say 100%, yes it'll increase speeds. Sometimes homes require a bit of playing around with to optimize coverage or get the performance you're looking for.
if powerline doesn't run great in your home another thing you can look at is moca adapters (ethernet over coax).
My house recently got remodeled and the basement is where I have my pc is not to old either all the walls were redone I don’t know if that would help I was going to use the extender and use the ethernet ports on it not wireless so I would go router-extender-wired-pc If that makes sense. And i don’t have a coax port in my room so unless you could link something like an adapter than I don’t know how I could do this
Not sure how to explain it properly.
Extenders work great if you need additional distance. If you're extender is right where the PC is going to be, it's usually better to just have the pc wireless. otherwise the extender has to recieve from the router and then pass that (even through ethernet) to the pc. this is an extra step which adds latency to your connection. If you're gaming, this is important. If you're not, then its not a big deal.
Even though you're hardwiring in the pc, you're still going through a wireless connection from the extender. So, unless you need extra distance, the extender isn't really benefiting.
Not trying to tell you not to get an extender as I think they work great, but they work great in the circumstances they're designed for.
Do you game on this PC where latency is important?
do you need the extra distance?
What type of pc is it? For around $35-40 you can get an intel AX200 and PCIe adapter card and have a AX wireless setup in a desktop.
- Ok I have a very new pc I’d rather not use wireless cause I have bad packet loss when I have it. And my pc is almost across my house from the router so I don’t know how that effect it. And I do care a lot about ping and latency.
A extender works best as a mid point. If the router is on the other side of the house from the PC an extender would work best right in the middle to 2/3rds the distance to improve the wireless connection. If you're putting it right where the pc is, its getting the same signal (and potential packet loss) the PC is getting.
If latency/ping is your goal, here's the order I'd persue.
1. Run an ethernet wire. Sometimes fishing a wire is worth the expense.
2. Moca adapter. ethernet over coax. If the router is where the coax enters the home and theres coax ran throughout the house, a moca adapter is ideal.
3. Power line. Powerline is a bit finicky to interference. Some homes it works great it, others its pretty much worthless. When it works though, it has low latency, ping, and is reliable. Problem is so many things can cause interference.
4. Mesh network. Orbi and other mesh networks do a great job with a wireless backhaul reserved just for communitcation between router-satellite. I've had great luck with them.
5. router and extender combination. it does work and can be as fast as a mesh network. but it needs to be placed optimally and setup right. Like I said, if you put it right where the computer is, its not going to have any better signal than the computer did in the first place. Also the wireless card in the pc is important. What do you have in the pc now thats causing such high packet loss?
the intel AX200 and AC9260 both work well and have options for 160hz wide bands for optimal throughput.
Another thought is to make sure that if you're gaming and it has to be wireless, make sure you're on the 5ghz. 2.4ghz has lower speeds and tends to have more interference.