I know this is a joke but please do not buy repeaters they do not work how you would expect them to work.
Repeaters take an already weak signal and amplify that signal while increasing the latency. Sure this makes the signal go farther but it doesn’t increase the bandwidth and if you stand in between the originating wifi source and the repeater your device may not migrate to the source wifi even though it might be faster because the reapeter has the illusion of being a better signal because it’s louder.
The better route to go is to use multiple wifi APs through out the building connected back to your router with ethernet.
You could also go with mesh access points but you have to do a lot of research and planning; The two key things to look out for is they mesh system must have a dedicated backhaul and you must place them where each node has an excellent signal to the next node. Since most backhauls run on 5Ghz and 6Ghz this means there shouldn’t be any walls between them.
Exactly. I’m going to be running Ethernet through my house soon, and even if we stay full Wi-Fi, we’ll benefit by having physical cables connecting the APs. I already have a separate AP, just need to run the cables to get a second in our basement where the signal is weak.
Do yourself a favor and drop fiber at the same time. That’s my plan for whenever I get around to crawling in the attic.
My city is rolling out fiber in a year or two, so I’ll have to ask them how that works, because I’d like to plan out where they drop it.
Is fiber really worth the extra complexity and expense? It’s strength is in longer distances with mostly straight runs. When you are doing short distances with multiple turns, copper is much easier and more forgiving. Splicing fiber is difficult if something breaks during or after installation, on top of the expense and skill needed for proper termination. Tools and hardware for copper are cheap, easy to use, and ubiquitous.
Why would you drop fiber when you can do 10gbps on ethernet at the distances most cabling would be in a home. Never would consider to run fiber and I just finished a couple of new cat7 drops in my home.
We have the luxury of having 1, 2.5, 10 and 25 gigabit fiber to the home but I haven’t considered even 2.5 until the services I use can leverage it
