WiFi Blast

[George Bokros]

Anyone know anything about them? They are supposed to stop bandwidth throtling by the ISP's improving your wi-fi speed. They are currently on sale fo $40.

Thanks

[Alan Rutherford]

I don't know anything about them that I didn't learn in the last 5 minutes through Google, but I don't see how they can affect throttling. They will extend the area where your wifi is effective. If you are getting poor wifi because you are at the fringe of the area your router covers they will improve that. They cannot transmit any faster than what the ISP is sending to the router.

[Jim Becker]

If your ISP throttles, there's zero you can do on your end to prevent it other than not exceeding the allowable bandwidth. Anything or anybody who claims that can use a gizmo to get around that is, um...being creative in their thinking. Throttling is done at the ISP network level by gear specific to the task for which you have no administrative access to. Now that's relative to your Internet access speed from your router out to the world. "WiFi" speed is related to your wireless access point's and device's wireless technology level and local conditions, including distance, building materials, etc. Internet speed and wireless speed are two separate things. As Alan mentions, there are some things you can do to improve wireless network performance in your home, sometimes using devices that extend/augment the signal range. How well they work also has a variety of factors involved.

[George Bokros]

Thanks for the input. You both have confirmed what I thought.

[Curt Harms]

If your ISP throttles, there's zero you can do on your end to prevent it other than not exceeding the allowable bandwidth. Anything or anybody who claims that can use a gizmo to get around that is, um...being creative in their thinking. ............

Something for nothing (or cheap) is pretty compelling to some people though.

[Ole Anderson]

Timely post for me, not regarding throttling, but range. My wife spends much time in her room on her phone, which is just at the limits of range from my new Netgear Nighthawk dual band modem. We have a good ISP connection, so sitting in the same room as the router, I can clock 200 mbps on my phone. So frequently, unknowingly, she uses up her phone data when she thinks she is on our WiFi. As much as 4 gigs a month. So I googled the OP's equipment question and came up with this as a solution: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L0YLRUW...6-e9178f1951a5 $25.77. Any reason this shouldn't work? Sorry for the hijack.

[Jim Becker]

Range extenders like that can sometimes help, Ole. You could also consider moving the Nighthawk to a more centralized location, depending on how your home is structured and available pathway for cabling, etc.

One of the reasons I went to a mesh system was to get away from the "dance" of multiple APs, extenders that provided marginal support, etc. But I have a very difficult environment for wireless due to building materials, etc.

[Alan Rutherford]

Ole, note that the device you linked to advertises "coverage up to 600 square feet". You know what "up to" means and 600 square feet is a radius of only about 14 feet.

[Edit: corrected my math.]

[Chuck Wintle]

Range extenders like that can sometimes help, Ole. You could also consider moving the Nighthawk to a more centralized location, depending on how your home is structured and available pathway for cabling, etc.

One of the reasons I went to a mesh system was to get away from the "dance" of multiple APs, extenders that provided marginal support, etc. But I have a very difficult environment for wireless due to building materials, etc.

Not trying to hijack the thread but how do range extenders work. Specifically how are they connected?

[Jim Becker]

Not trying to hijack the thread but how do range extenders work. Specifically how are they connected?

"In general", they pick up the limited signal and re-broadcast it. Therein lies the rub...with the simpler extender systems, you feel like you have a great connection because you see the indicator with all those bars, but in reality, the link between the extender and the primary access point (AP) is often still compromised and will be a bottleneck, although it likely is a better connection than the end-device that's still farther away from the primary AP. But it does help to stop the issue that Ole described where his partner-in-crime's phone is dropping off the weak WiFI signal and hitting cellular because the device feels that signal is stronger. These days, a mesh network is often a better choice than extenders if you want "actual" great coverage and full bandwidth across the total area you want to provide wireless network to. Most of them have a "private" wireless channel connection between the nodes for "backhaul" which is engineered to provide better performance and also frees up both the 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ "WiFi" bands to serve just devices.

[Larry Frank]

I have the same Netgear router and I just added that same range extender to my Wi-Fi network for my wife. It works well and wife is very happy. Happy wife...happy life!

[Brian Elfert]

I use Unifi mesh access points in my house because I have a detached garage with no easy way to bury an Ethernet line out there. My wifi speeds seem to be just fine.

I have seen warnings that you'll get better speeds if the access points are hard wired where possible. I have an access point in the center of my house that isn't hard wired, but only because I have been too lazy to finish hooking up the Ethernet line that is already run.

[Jim Becker]

Brian, three out of my four mesh nodes are hardwired because as good as they are, the materials a big chunk of our home is built from conspire to limit even the "private" wireless connection between them. Hard wiring means zero compromise in network speed to each node which in turn helps keep throughput with each node to the maximum practical for the environment they are living in.