<p>We don’t have a gigantic house, but have a big fieldstone chimney smack dab in the center of the house. Any rooms beyond the chimney get poor reception. Kids complaining that they’re eating into their data plan because can’t use the wifi (boo hoo, I’m still on a hardwired desktop, but anyway…).</p>
<p>Best Buy and amazon both carry Netgear wifi extenders. We have a perfect spot to plug one in and carry the signal beyond the stone behemoth. </p>
<p>Do they work? Amazon ratings are mostly positive, but a couple of folks describe the devices like they’re total junk. Technology-impaired, perhaps??</p>
<p>Also—one reviewer mentioned the extender cuts the wifi speed in half. Anybody find a noticeable slowdown?</p>
<p>If anyone knows, CC’ers know! Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>I configured a few out of older routers using DD-WRT for clients living in pre-war apartment buildings with thick pipe/metal laden walls. </p>
<p>The effectiveness of wireless extenders is heavily dependent on the particular environment and the actual chipset/hardware/antennas in the routers being marketed by companies like Netgear*. </p>
<p>I’d check to see the return policies are reasonable so you can try them out in your home environment. </p>
<p>If you have an old unused router which has 802.11G capability or better, see if you can configure it as an extender through its firmware or by upgrading it to a third-party firmware like DD-WRT or Tomato. Granted, this is best attempted by those who are tech savvy or at least willing to potentially brick an old router. </p>
<ul>
<li>Wireless router companies can use a variety of different chipsets/hardware configurations even within the same model series. The Linksys WRT-54G series is a good case in point as viewed on the wikipedia article.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>We do have a large house and when I got my new laptop, I had issues with the signal cutting out several times a day. It was incredibly annoying. I finally had had enough, and called our tech guy to come have a look at it. He installed an Apple booster and have not had the problem even once since then. I kicked myself for waiting as long as I did before calling him. There has been no reduction in speed.</p>
<p>lizard–range isn’t the problem–I can be in my hammock in the back yard and get good wifi signal–it’s getting around the massive stone chimney! Signal has no trouble getting through wood–New England granite is another matter.</p>
<p>You plug in a wifi equipment into linksys via ethernet and you have wifi. I happened to have 2 Apple Airports, so I used them. I could have used cheaper equipment.</p>
<p>Power-line based networking products are dependent on having reasonably modern wiring. </p>
<p>Something which isn’t guaranteed in older homes or apartments. </p>
<p>A reason why I didn’t recommend them to many folks…especially those living in older pre-war apartment buildings. </p>
<p>However, in OP’s case, it’s another avenue to be considered and tested…provided the vendor has a decent return policy just in case. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Underneath the apple branding are chipsets used by a variety of other wifi router manufacturers. </p>
<p>Moreover, one snag a few friends have noticed with some Apple Airports is finding newer Macs or PCs could no longer configure the settings after a certain amount of time or a firmware upgrade on older Apple Airports.</p>
<p>H installed one for his use. Single story house means longer distances than two stories for us. “TP LINK” is on the front of the plug into the wall socket device. He tried different locations and the best is in the dining room- it has a lit ring according to strength so it is not in an annoying place. Worth it. H didn’t want to spend much money.</p>
<p>We’re using at home now a refurbished Netgear wireless router we bought from Amazon for $23. It handles all sorts of our devices, including Roku and Chromecast for TVs, Windows laptops and Windows cell phones, Android tablets and cell phones, iPhones and iPads. It works for us…have always had best luck setting up Netgear routers…easy and painless!</p>
<p>That is true due to increased overhead needed to maintain connection with the primary router. </p>
<p>However, the main effects of this will mainly be felt if one’s doing a lot of large file transfers between the primary and wifi extender connected devices or have a large number of computers/other devices drawing large amounts of data at the same time from the primary router through the wifi-extender. </p>
<p>Our router/wifi is in the lower level of our bi-level home, and actually slightly below ground level. So wifi reception on the upper level was poor unless you were directly above the router. I’ve been using an Amped Wireless range extender for several years. It works great. Just put it somewhere where it has good reception ~75% signal strength to your original router, and where its signal can also travel to where you want reception. I’ve seen no degradation of speed through either wifi connection.</p>
<p>Any wireless node would work, but when you look at the boxes you’ll see many are single band, meaning 2.4GHs. You want your network to be dual band, 5 and 2.4, and ideally simultaneous and of course “n” spec. I would think nearly all routers sold today are n but I’m continually surprised by how many are not dual band, not simultaneous - which is one reason why my network is a bunch of Apple airport expresses. At $99 but dual band simultaneous, they turn out to be cheaper (sometimes) than good quality equivalents. Also, nearly all the routers today should support modern security. I was surprised a few years ago to find some weren’t but that was then.</p>
<p>Now if your network is not dual band, adding one that is won’t help because the network will default to the lower. </p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind is that the higher the frequency of a given wifi signal, the shorter the range and more sensitive it will be to environmental/electromagnetic interference. </p>
<p>In short, 2.4 Ghz may not carry as much data, but will have longer range and be more reslient to environmental/electromagnetic interference than 5 Ghz. </p>
<p>Like others, we use Apple Airports for our network and as an extender–good product, relatively easy to use (many non-Apple products make it incredibly difficult if not impossible to configure the settings). However, I’m considering installing a hardwired Ethernet port to feed into the TV to appease the Netflix deities. Oh joy, crawling under the house and drilling into walls! If nothing else works, OP, you can always string wire. Which is not quite that simple (see reference to walls), but it is an option.</p>