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Forum Discussion
What to look for in extenders
I got my Orbi router and Satellite believing that it would give me a great range for my 2-story house, tiny back yard, and detached studio (former garage) on a 5,000 square foot lot. But once I ...
The choice of networking hardware depends heavily on what functionality and throughput you need. In the use case scenario you provides, if 1 gigabit throughput is absolutely needed for WiFi, then you will really need multiple access points and a wired (Ethernet) backhaul to your main router. Even then, for wireless clients to get full gigabit speeds, you will need to move to 802.11ax, or if using 802.11ac, then it would need to be 3 stream 802.11ac, or 2 stream 802.11ac at 160MHz channel width.
Most AC clients are 2 stream, thus a max PHY rate of 866.7 Mbps, which often max for a max real world throughput of around 600-650Mbps, if the SNR is good.
If your throughput needs are not a full gigabit then wireless mesh systems such as adding more satellites to an 802.11ac orbi system will work well, as the wireless backhaul can reach real world sustained speeds in the 800+Mbps range under ideal conditions, and since it has a dedicated radio for the backhaul, there you don't lose too much throughput from subsequent wifi clients connecting to the satellite device.
While 802.11ax mesh systems are better able toprovide a consistent full gigabit throughput over a longer range, they are also a larger investment to make.
PS, I also wanted to add for your orbi device, if you are getting poor speeds in the yard, check the signal strength, if it looks good but speeds are very slow, then try seeing if you can force your device to use the 5GHz band. If speeds improve drastically, then your location may have a lot of congestion on the 2.4GHz band where either from band edge interference, e.g., someone using channel 5 while you use channel 6 (where there can be someoverlap of the spectrum used), a lot of throughput can be lost from frames needing to be retransmitted constantly , or in the case of high channel utilization, to avoid collisions, it could just be starved for airtime. This all can cause poor throughput even if a signal seems strong.
Forgot to mention, if you can, also try testing the speeds with a system that is connected to the satellite via Ethernet, this will allow you to more accurately measure the backhaul throughput to see if it is performing normally. If the backhaul has throughput issues, then the satellite may be too far from main orbi unit, or the main orbi unit may be next to another access point that (e.g., if someone has an orbi and another wireless router right next to each other, and boh units have their WiFi turned on).