Do You Lose Signal Strength With a Wi-Fi Repeater?
A Wi-Fi repeater is also called a range extender, a wireless relay, a range expander or a Wi-Fi extender. A wireless router sends data over radio waves instead of cable. The radio waves are also known as a signal, and the extent to which this signal reaches in all directions is known as its footprint. The distance from the router to the edge of the footprint is its range. A wireless repeater makes the signal of a Wi-Fi router available at a further distance. The repeater is itself wireless and does not need to be connected to the router by a cable.
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Properties
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A Wi-Fi repeater is like a Wi-Fi router, but without any processing power. It does not have any software to enable it to address data passing through it. The repeater neither interprets nor examines any of the signals it processes and is not built to clean up a signal by removing interference. It simply renews the signal to travel the same distance again.
Position
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Most Wi-Fi routers are “omni-directional.” Their footprint is a sphere with the signal reaching an equal distance in all directions. Most householders place their router over by a wall, because it needs to be connected to a power socket and either the telephone socket, or be near a window (if it's receiving Internet wirelessly). This means almost half of the signal footprint goes out of the house. The repeater works by extending the range in one direction. It needs to be within range of the router so it can receive and send signals to it, and is best placed just inside the edge of the router's signal footprint. The reach of the router's signal is thus slightly less than doubled in one direction.
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Footprint
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Wireless repeaters have their own signal footprint; like the footprint of a router, it is omnidirectional. If visible, viewed from above, the two signal ranges would look like an oval. A wireless-enabled computer within the range of the outer side of the repeater's footprint can communicate with the router even though it is outside of the router's signal footprint. Any signal received by the repeater is immediately re-transmitted, so the router, within range of the repeater, receives the signal from the out-of-range computer. Similarly, all transmissions from the router are re-transmitted by the wireless repeater, meaning that a computer out of the router's signal range, but within the repeater's footprint, can receive the signal.
Detraction
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The wireless repeater indiscriminately repeats everything in all directions. This means that the router immediately receives its own signal, as do any transmitting computers in range of the repeater. It does not weaken the router's signal strength, but it doubles traffic within the repeater's footprint. Since Wi-Fi transmitters have to wait for silence on a frequency channel, the Wi-Fi extender can slow down the performance of a wireless network.
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References
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