?'s about Linksys Wireless Range Extender

[vetman81]

Does anyone use one of these? If so, is it worth the money? Thanks.

[CT11]

depends on what you're doing with it. I personally would just get a second AP.

~CT

[VinnyTheFish]

I do not use one. My regular wireless covers my house and my porch. I never really tried to see how far I could go.

Friday, I was at our new local gentleman's "sports" club. One guy had his laptop with wireless internet. We were in an industrial area, no hotels/Starbucks around, only businesses. The closest houses were about 100 yards+ away.

I figured he had a satellite internet or some new service that I did not know of. So I asked him how he was internet connected?

He said he simply picked up someone’s wireless network signal. I am not an expert. I have a very small idea about how this entire wireless thing works. Just something to think about.

[vetman81]

Right now my PC is in the basement. I was thinking about getting this so that I could get a stronger signal upstairs. If I got another AP, how could I set it up without running wires all over the place? That is what my main concern about that is, unless there is an easier way. Thanks.

[emonrad87]

Could you put your cable/dsl modem and router upstairs and then connect the downstairs PC to it wirelessly? Like, do you have a cable outlet that you could use? You can put your router anywhere without having it directly connected to a PC. You really do want your router as high as possible, the coverage is much better that way.

[climber]

I considered buying the range extender and instead returned my Linksys for a Netgear access point.

I was having big range problems in a big old house. Searches I did online through various forums turned up a lot of unhappy linksys folks and a lot of happy netgear folks--at least as far as range is concerned.

Thankfuly BestBuy's return policy is pretty flexible and its all taken care of now. The Netgear 802.11G AP took care of all my range problems. I think its a ripoff that linksys wants to make further profit by selling us another product since their first product was inferior.

All that said I wouldn't play in any games that were too important to me over a wireless connection. If its an important tourney I think I'd want to plug my machine in. Read the sites T&C's and make sure you like there disconnect and all-in procedures.