Robin, if I talk directly to you, it’s a 1 to 1 comm path. If I put a person inbetween both of us, and then I tlk to him, then he talks to you, that’s called a “hop”. Hops COST.
Extenders CAN work, but they are rapidly becoming “yesterdays” solution, because of the “halving” of your bandwith for every one you use.
You start out with 100Mb, you install an extender, you cut it in half to 50Mb. You install another, you’re down to 25 Mb and so on.
Meshing (Mesh Networks) are turning into the solution.
@robin, what you really need to get is a FREE app, called WIFI Analyzer, so you can SEE what’s going on. WIFI signal strength, and even more importantly, your CHANNELS.
If you have neighbors, and other WIFI devices, all saturating a particular channel, it can cripple your speeds. WIFI Analyzer, will SHOW you who is on WHAT channel. If a channel is too overcrowded, you can log into you router, and push it to a FREE channel.
Think of a 4 lane highway, with ALL the cars jammed into the LEFT LANE. ALL 3 other lanes are empty, imagine the congestion, in that 1 lane ??
OK< simple, right ?? Same, same with WIFI channels.
I literally deal with this all the time, and mostly on larger scale, load balancing, subnetting, filtering, blah, blah, blah, but SAME principals apply to residential.
So you can set the TP Link to act as an access point, it will handle the wireless signal instead of the modem. Therefore you would turn off the wifi on the modem. You would connect the TP Link to the modem via ethernet cable.
As mentioned above, most providers modem/routers/AP’s suck. That’s why they’re called all in ones.
See if you can work with what you got first. I’m not hating on extenders, just realize what they do GOOD, and BAD. If you use WIFI analyzer, you’ll see signal strength, channels, etc. To answer your channel question, in the channels are always set to AUTO in most router/modems. You can login (AFTER you find a nice free/open channel), and change it in the router/modem. NOTHING will have to be changed on ANY of your WIFI devices.
NOW, let’s talk radios. You’ve probably got TWO. 2.4, and 5 (dual band) in your router/modem. Hopefully you can see BOTH, when looking for network SSID’s (wireless network names), as it makes things better. Many providers are smashing them together into a SON (Self Organizing Network), and in that case, the modem/router DECIDES (Fail) who gets to connect to what.
ONLY connect things that are close to the router to the 5 network, anything further away, or that’s behind walls, connect to the 2.4.
If you want to send me screenshots of your analyzer I can help more.
BEST way to FIX a problem is see what it IS first @robin.
If you have low strength, we can boost it. If you’re on a congested channel, we’ll move you. If you are connecting to your 5Ghz network too far away, we’ll move you to the 2.4Ghz band. If a simple extender WILL work for you, we’ll get that going.
Take a look at the Channel shot above, look at the Red “Home” network. See how it’s all the way over on channel 11, ALL by itself, avoiding all the congestion over to the left ? THAT is what you want.