Question Wifi extender question

Goooner

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Just bought a Ring Video Doorbell. It tells me the wifi signal on the outside of the door is poor, it's about the furthest away from my BT HH6 that it could be, so video from the bell was either poor or non-existent.

Bought a BT Wifi extender 300, managed to get it working after a load of faffing about, didn't pair with the WPS button, had to set it up via Ethernet to my pc.

It did improve things a bit, the signal from the bell now is mainly good, but can go to poor at times, nature of wifi, I guess.

If i plug it in on the side of the room closest to the bell, it's too far from the router to get a good signal.

I've got a network switch on the good side of the room, so my question is, can I plug the extender into my switch using it's Ethernet cable and will it extend the wifi from there which will should in theory have the best possible signal as it's attached directly wired? This is probably a stupid question, but are Ethernet sockets two way? Or would the socket on the extender just be out only to connect to the pc?
 
... Bought a BT Wifi extender 300, ...
I've got a network switch on the good side of the room, so my question is, can I plug the extender into my switch using it's Ethernet cable and will it extend the wifi from there which will should in theory have the best possible signal as it's attached directly wired? This is probably a stupid question, but are Ethernet sockets two way? Or would the socket on the extender just be out only to connect to the pc?

No, I don't think that will work, it appears that the BT Wifi extender 300 is *just* an extender, although it allows you to connect a wired Ethernet device (such as a Blu-ray player etc.) to your WiFi via that Ethernet port.

I think what you want is an Access Point, not an Extender. This connects via Ethernet to your network (your switch) and produces another WiFi sender/receiver. You can make this the same SSID and security setup as your main WiFi, but needs to be configured onto a different WiFi channel. You can often use an old WiFi router as an Access Point - see the sticky at the top of this forum about using two routers to extend your WiFi coverage.
 
Had a look at the sticky. All seems very complicated to me :laugh:

Can you piggy back two extenders together? So just buy another of what I've already got and leave the existing one where it is and link another one to that but put it closer to where I want it?
 
Had a look at the sticky. All seems very complicated to me :laugh:?
It should be more straightforward with a "proper" Access Point, but at the very least you'll need to configure the WiFi SSID and security.

Can you piggy back two extenders together? So just buy another of what I've already got and leave the existing one where it is and link another one to that but put it closer to where I want it?
You could, and it might work. However, because of the way WiFi works, adding extenders reduces performance of your WiFi for all devices. This is because WiFi is a "only one device can talk at a time" transmission technology (as are Powerlines), this means that for a WiFi packet of data to get to a device at the far side of two extenders, your WiFi network will be busy while :

WiFi Router --- data --> Extender #1 --- data --> Extender #2 --- data --> Client Device

and then, assuming there's a reply :

Client Device --- data --> Extender #2 --- data --> Extender #1 --- data --> WiFi Router

If you used an Access Point instead, then *both* the WiFi Router and Access Point could be active at the same time. This means that adding Access Point(s) increases the capacity (total data throughput) of your WiFi network, while adding Extenders reduces the capacity (it has to wait for the extra hops).
 
Turns out it wasn't as complicated as I thought :)

Found a YouTube vid and followed that. Used my old HH5 and it's now an access point to my HH6 :)
 

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