Can't get good Wifi signal

[kjakubowski]

We live in a two bedroom townhome which isn't very large.  I've been trying to get a good WiFi signal in the far corner of the house for my wife to work from home and I have been unable to do so.

I have a Nighthawk X6 AC3200 router and I just bought a AC2200 extender.  Here is the floorplan of our house:

Link in case image doesn't display: https://i.imgur.com/Jhg7eLO.jpg

The modem is next to the router and they cannot be moved as my PC is hardwired.  My hardwired speed (Ookla) is around 360 mbps.  I am trying to get a signal to where I have "Signal Needed" indicated and the red area is the main stack of the house.  Before using the extender, I was getting the following speeds (multiple readings):

Next to router: 350 mbps

Extender location: 150-170 mbps

Signal Needed location: 10-20 mbps

After plugging the extender in, I get the following speeds (multiple readings):

Next to router: 350 mbps (same as before)

Extender location: 140 - 160 mbps

Signal Needed location: 30 - 40 mbps

I can't tell if the extender is working or not (my previous extender used multiple naming conventions where this one just repeats the name coming from the router).

If the extender was actually working, shouldn't I be getting over 100 mbps in the Signal Needed location since it's pretty close to the extender (approx 25 feet) where I was getting 140 - 160?  Why is it still so low there?

[plemans]

Which extender did you get? AC2200 is a speed

[kjakubowski]

Oops.  It's the Nighthawk X4 WiFi Mesh Extender.  EX7300.

[plemans]

The EX7300 is a dual band mesh extender.

so a few facts/info about dual and single band extends that most people don't know. 

1. They cut throughput 50% of what they're receiving. Reason why is they have to send---receive between router---extender and then extender----device. And they can't do both at once. So their speed is 50% of what they're receiving at that location. so if you're getting 140-160mbps at that location you can (roughly) expect 70-80mbps from it. 

2. 2.4ghz is much much slower than 5ghz and more sensitive to interference (which tends to be bad in townhomes). I highly doubt the 140-160mbps is over 2.4ghz.  I'm betting its over 5ghz.  With the EX7300 being a mesh extender, it can swap devices between 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands as needed. If you're testing over 2.4ghz, the 30-40mbps is actually pretty impressive. Not as much so over 5ghz. So make sure if you're speedtesting, to be testing over 5ghz. 

3. test the actual speed at the extender with the extender. hardwire a pc/laptop into the ethernet port (disable the wifi on pc/laptop so it doesn't default back to that connection) and test the speed. Whatever speed you're getting from that, you'd get the roughly 50% of that.

What do you get hardwired in?

The triband extenders get much better speeds as they have a dedicated 5ghz link just for router---extender communication.