Do not buy a WiFi repeater to improve the signal, better buy this

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WiFi repeaters are one of the most popular devices to improve the wireless signal in our home. Although in some specific cases WiFi repeaters can be a useful, cheap and very easy to install solution, we must bear in mind that these types of devices add a lot of latency to the wireless network, WiFi congestion in our home, and most importantly, everything: we lose half of the bandwidth when connecting via WiFi to the repeater. For these reasons, it is much better to buy other devices that will provide us with better performance and user experience, although in principle they are somewhat more expensive than the typical repeaters.

What to buy instead of a WiFi repeater?

The first thing you should find out is if your house has Ethernet network sockets in the rooms. In all new homes from the year 2011 we have Ethernet network sockets available, which go from the PAU at the entrance of the house, next to the electrical panel, to all the rooms, living room and kitchen. Thanks to these network sockets, we will be able to place additional devices on our network and we will have the best possible performance, since the network traffic between the nodes goes through the wired network. In these cases, you should buy a simultaneous dual band WiFi Mesh system, and connect the different nodes to the Ethernet network socket to have the best possible performance. If your house isn’t wired, then you’ll have to resort to other devices to improve the signal.

New WiFi Mesh system (triple band)

WiFi Mesh systems are one of the “inventions” of recent years to have the best WiFi coverage and speed at home. These types of devices allow you to connect with each other intelligently, and have both WiFi roaming and band-steering in the connection. This means that we will connect to a single SSID (WiFi network name) and we can move freely around the house without having to change the wireless network manually, everything will be done automatically by the WiFi mesh system.

It is highly recommended that Wi-Fi Mesh systems be simultaneous triple band, and use one of these Wi-Fi frequency bands for the interconnection of nodes, otherwise, we will lose half of the bandwidth after the first hop, due to the very nature of the Wi-Fi network. If you don’t have the budget to buy a triple band Mesh WiFi, then one that is dual band with Wi-Fi 6 will also be worth it perfectly, and will provide you with excellent performance.

buy a new router

Although WiFi Mesh systems are really good, not all users need this type of device, especially if you have a relatively small house. If you have a single-story house of up to 140 square meters, surely with a powerful WiFi router located in the center of the house, it will be enough to provide coverage to the entire house without any problem.

When buying a new router, you should check that the WiFi standard is WiFi 6, the WiFi class that is AX3000 onwards, and also the number of Ethernet ports that we have available, as well as the firmware of the equipment so that it has all the necessary options you need. One of the routers with the best value for money is the following:

This equipment will provide you with high WiFi speed, and very good performance for online games.

Use PLC, as a last option

In the event that you cannot buy a WiFi Mesh system because it is too expensive, then our recommendation is that you use PLCs with Wi-Fi. Although these devices also introduce additional connection latency, and you may experience instability if your home electrical network is not in good condition, it is the best thing you can buy to improve the wireless signal and also to increase the speed.

Nowadays there are WiFi Mesh systems that use the Powerline network for the interconnection of the different nodes, this means that we have the best of Mesh WiFi (roaming between nodes and band-steering) and the best of Powerline, which is the trunk network to through the electrical network. The negative part is that these devices are quite expensive, at the same level as WiFi Mesh and even more expensive. For example, one of these models is the ASUS ZenWiFi XP4 that we have analyzed in RedesZone.

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