TP-Link AC750 Dual Band Wi-Fi Range Extender
Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.
Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is the TP-Link AC750 Dual Band Wi-Fi Range Extender. I got one of these to provide better WiFi signal to the outdoor areas around my home. I am a big fan of TP-Link and already reviewed their TP-LINK Archer C7 Wireless Router in a prior review.
The two work together great but this extender will work with any wireless modem running on 2.4 and/or 5GHz. Here is what I love about this extender vs. others I have tried.
There is no software to configure it and the start up guide is DEAD simple. You simply plug it in and take any computer with wireless and connect to it, you log in as the admin with included info for that. You then attach it to any other networks in your home and tell it the password for those. It learns them and done, you can now plug it in anywhere it gets a good signal and it will simply reconnect.
What this does is pretty cool. Other similar items I have used instead basically attach to your network and create a new network. For instance, we will call your main network A and your extender creates a network B, B has its own login info, etc. So you are on one network and get too far away, if your device manages to self switch to B fine but this usually doesn’t happen. Sometimes your devices become confused as to which network to be on if both are weak etc.
Instead with this device if your network is Network A, this device simply becomes an extension of Network A. And if you are running a cool router like the TP-LINK Archer it is every better. The TP-LINK Archer runs at both 2.4 and 5GHz, which is great because for instance our older printer is only on 2.4 and for some reason our smart TV only like 5. But we also have “Guest Networks” on the TP-LINK Archer. This isolates guest logons from our main devices in their own network.
So when I configured the TP-Link AC750 Dual Band Wi-Fi Range Extender I attached it only two the two guest networks. So now when my guests arrive I can provide good quality WiFi on both bands so everyone can connect. I created a relatively simple password for this week that will be changed later and only the guest networks are accessible.
If any of this sounds complicated it isn’t. Despite what people think about me I am not some sort of a bad ass hacker or anything, if you can update your iPhone you can install this repeater and again while I think it is a beautiful match for the Archer 7 Router the TP-Link AC750 Dual Band Wi-Fi Range Extender is “vendor agnostic”, meaning it doesn’t care what manufacture it is extending it just works. So if you have dead zones or just want your WiFi to reach the back of your property consider getting one of these today.
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lol, I just bought one of these so I could relocate some servers into my garage without having to pull cable through the whole house 😛
(It has a Gigabit ethernet port on the bottom as well)
i heard you can use old cell phones fer extender also …never tried though
https://www.gadgetdaily.xyz/turn-your-android-device-into-a-wi-fi-extender/
I would be very interested to hear how this performs as you add users. I know you have a background in networking, Jack, but many folks don’t, so for everyone else…
The way wireless range extenders work is that they use the same channel/frequency as your base station and repeat that signal out on the same channel. This means that your radio channel gets saturated at twice its normal rate. This isn’t noticeable with a handful of users, but with a class or party you might grind to a halt real quick.
There’s a new breed of “range extender” that usually is labelled as a mesh network wireless access point. It has an extra radio that talks to the base wireless unit on the base’s channel. The mesh extender then handles its wireless clients on a different channel with the other radio which avoids the saturation issue.
So again, really curious as to how this performs under load.
I used Ubiquity’s Unify line of hardware to redo my home network and blogged about it here: http://www.theendofthetunnel.org/2017/10/22/homestead-network-upgrades/
My current AP has mesh capability and I’ll be adding some external mesh APs this spring.