Extreme speed loss with wifi repeater/extender

Zanzonyx · May 28, 2014

Recently I moved my PC upstairs which caused me to have terrible internet connection. I would get 1-2 bars connection, and it would often fall away completely. ( PC in the attic, router downstairs). I decided to get a wifi repeater/extender: The Sitecom WLX-2006. I was warned that my internet speed may be cut in half because of the way a repeater works.

However I am experiencing extreme speed loss. Wired to my router I get download speed around 105 Megabit/s and upload speed 10 Megabit/s (Speedtest)
Now that the PC is upstairs and connected through the wifi repeater I get around 8-10 Megabit/s download and 8 Megabit/s upload. Ping is around the same.

I feel like this loss of internet speed is due to settings, because the upload speed and ping are close to what I get with a wired connection, but I can't for the life of me figure out what settings I should change, and I really don't want to mess around with things I have little to no knowledge of.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!

abailey · May 28, 2014

Where is your extender located? Remember if it is in the same room as your PC then it is getting the same signal your PC is (which is not good). Your extender needs to be between your PC and the wireless router. I assume your using 2.4ghz wireless. Make sure you are using only channels 1,6, or 11. Also make sure your channel width is set to 20mhz, not 40 or Auto.
A little about wireless: Your extender can do 300Mbit theoretical. That is if it gets a very good signal. Now to compare that to a wired connection you have to cut that in half as wireless signals are half duplex. So now we are talking 150Mbit. Now wirless also has alot of overhead. You typically only get about 65% of the bandwidth. So now we are talking 97.5Mbit/s. Since you are running in extender mode, you half to cut it in half again, so about 48Mbit/s. So 48Mbit/s would be the absolute best if you had an excellent signal. If the signal falls off even a little bit then your bandwidth could cut in half again (24Mbit). If you have a weak signal, from the wifi router to the extender, or from the extender to your computer, then your speed can be even less. On top of this you are sharing bandwidth with all other wireless devices in your house, and potentially competing for signal with your neighbors.
This is why i usually do not use extenders. I have used dual channel extenders where they transmit to the client on 2.4ghz but talk to the wifi router on 5ghz, and the wifi router talks to its clients on 2.4ghz. This eliminates the 1/2 throughput problem with normal repeaters. In your case a powerline adapter night work better. Also if you had COAX in your house a MOCA adapter might could be used.

Zanzonyx · May 28, 2014

abailey :

The extender is placed on the first floor, so that's basically in the middle, I am getting the full 5 bars of wifi signal through the extender..

I am using 2.4ghz wireless (B+G+N) on channel 1. But the channel width is set to auto 20/40.
Since I am getting a great connection let's say the max amount of speed would be 48 MB. That's still a whole lot more than what I'm getting now.

If I change the channel width from auto to 20, what would that do and would it improve my speed?

bill001g · May 28, 2014

Setting the bandwidth to 20 technically will reduce the speed by half. The maximum speed you can get with 20mhz is 72.2m. It is then doubled to 150 with 2x2 mimo and take to 225 or so with 3x3 mimo. The reason it works better in a environment with lots of interference is a 20 mhz channel with less interference can pass more data than a 40mhz channel with lot of interfernece. Running a repeater just makes this issue even more pronounced so it is best to try to get one channel group rather than try for 2. It is very hard thing to do with many people using 40mhz as it is. There is only 60mhz total unless you use 5g.

These are the types of things you just have to play around with and see what the best you can do in your house. You never really know which channels are going to work the best and if 20 or 40mhz is better. You want to try to use channel 1 or 11 first. channel 6 is ALWAYS used by 40mhz so your odds of interference are highest on channel 6. You can try some of the others like 3 or 9 but generally those work worse but it doesn't hurt to test and see if you get lucky.

fredyyy · Dec 16, 2015

abailey :

Where is your extender located? Remember if it is in the same room as your PC then it is getting the same signal your PC is (which is not good). Your extender needs to be between your PC and the wireless router. I assume your using 2.4ghz wireless. Make sure you are using only channels 1,6, or 11. Also make sure your channel width is set to 20mhz, not 40 or Auto.
A little about wireless: Your extender can do 300Mbit theoretical. That is if it gets a very good signal. Now to compare that to a wired connection you have to cut that in half as wireless signals are half duplex. So now we are talking 150Mbit. Now wirless also has alot of overhead. You typically only get about 65% of the bandwidth. So now we are talking 97.5Mbit/s. Since you are running in extender mode, you half to cut it in half again, so about 48Mbit/s. So 48Mbit/s would be the absolute best if you had an excellent signal. If the signal falls off even a little bit then your bandwidth could cut in half again (24Mbit). If you have a weak signal, from the wifi router to the extender, or from the extender to your computer, then your speed can be even less. On top of this you are sharing bandwidth with all other wireless devices in your house, and potentially competing for signal with your neighbors.
This is why i usually do not use extenders. I have used dual channel extenders where they transmit to the client on 2.4ghz but talk to the wifi router on 5ghz, and the wifi router talks to its clients on 2.4ghz. This eliminates the 1/2 throughput problem with normal repeaters. In your case a powerline adapter night work better. Also if you had COAX in your house a MOCA adapter might could be used.

Came across this thread because I'm going the same problem, I get everything you said except for the last part, what does powerline adapter has to do with COAX and MOCA adapter? I have time warner cable as my internet provider, does this mean I have COAX in the house?

Pooneil · Dec 17, 2015

fredyyy :

They accomplish the same thing in different ways. MOCA is a way to use your home coax wiring for computer networking. That is if the house has COAX in the location where you want the computer networking. It is pretty rare and more expensive but can be helpful in some circumstances. I would suggest it as a last resort.

Tempname553 · Jan 19, 2016

Due to the circumstances of my situation, I can't confirm this, but before my solution, I had the router connecting to the repeater with WPA-2 and AES security, and the repeater to the users with a second, different, WPA-2 and AES security. I changed the second (repeater to users) from the same security to a simple WEP 64 bit encryption security, open authentication.

I cannot confirm if this helped, but it seems to have... I am not getting the full amount, but it's certainly better than before, but most notably, the connection is much more stable.

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