WiFi is best with wires

Avoiding 'extenders' to improve your experience

Its hard to believe that I grew up in a world before WiFi. In fact, I grew up in a world before the Internet but was quickly enamoured with it when it became available, even if it was by dial-up.

Today, most people would never put up with slow Internet access if they had the choice but a lot of them are unknowingly limiting themselves by using ever-so-popular WiFi extenders. I’m going to try and keep this short and simple, so if you have more detailed questions just ask below. There will also be a few links that mostly serve as examples and are certainly not your only options. They are affiliate links because why wouldn’t I want credit for recommending something if you buy it?

The problem

You probably have a WiFi router from your ISP. You’ve probably set it up closest to where that Internet feed comes into your house (by fibre or cable or whatever) and there’s probably other rooms of your house with much worse reception than where that router is. That’s because WiFi loses about half its signal every time it passes through a wall (or floor or ceiling).

If your router is in the very middle of your house and passes through an equal number of walls in every direction, you’d probably have fairly decent reception depending on the size of your space. But if its over in one corner as it often is, the far corner of the house from it will be several walls away in a straight line and have much worse signal.

The solution

Let’s start with the right answer: buy an access point and hook it up with an Ethernet cable. An access point (or AP) is a WiFi connection that is not a router, which means a lot of technical things that don’t matter right now, except that it simplifies your life. But Michael, you might say, I don’t want to run a network cable across my house! You don’t have to. You can pick up a couple power line Ethernet adaptors and your house’s power outlets become your network connection. Plug one in near your router and connect it there, and the other end in the area of your house with bad reception and plug your AP in to that one. You should now be golden. (Incidentally there are also outdoor versions that are weather proof, but that’s most likely going to require drilling).

The worse option

But why not just use an extender? They’re cheaper and simple! Well, because an extender can only ‘extend’ what it can see. Lets say the reception in your bedroom is only 20% of where the router is, and you add an extender. That extender will offer 100% of that 20% to you — and give you a signal on your device that looks great but is still just as slow. The only way to really benefit from an extender is to move it fairly close to the router so its “boosting” a better signal. You’d want in my opinion at least 50% of the full router speed where you add the extender. In contrast, everywhere you add a wired access point is receiving 100% of the original signal power to share wirelessly.

I hope that helped and wasn’t too hard to follow. Let me know!