When it comes to extend wireless coverage in our home, the vast majority of people turn to WiFi repeaters for many reasons. Some reasons are that they are really easy to set up, they are very cheap compared to other similar alternatives such as Powerline PLCs, and also that they will provide sufficient performance for basic tasks. However, there are some situations in which using a WiFi repeater is not the best optionand it all depends on the use you are going to give it with the connected wireless clients, neither use an old router as a repeater it’s a good idea. Next, we explain everything that you should not use, because the wireless network could go really badly for you.
Do not use a WiFi repeater if you are going to use it for this
If you are thinking of buying a WiFi repeater in your home to expand wireless coverage, you should know that there are certain uses that are not recommended, because the WiFi network will work really badly for you and the user experience will be disastrous. In addition, these uses could seriously harm the rest of the devices connected to the router and the repeater, so you must take this into account.
Online games
Online games need to have the lowest possible latency, in order to have the best user experience when playing, and that everything does not happen late. It is also very important to have a jitter under control, close to 0ms so as not to have “lags” while we are playing. For this reason, it is always recommended to connect the PC or game console via cable to the router, and never use WiFi.
By using a WiFi repeater and connecting to it, not only the latency of the connection will increase but also the jitter of the connection (latency variation). For this reason, if you plan to play online, do not connect to a repeater, because it will work even worse than if you connect directly to the router.
video streaming
Video streaming, whether from platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and even YouTube, is a bad idea if you have a repeater. We must bear in mind that the bitrate is about 25Mbps for 4K resolution, however, depending on the platform and the quality of the video, this could vary.
The available bandwidth for clients when using a repeater is half that of connecting directly to the router. In addition, another aspect that you must take into account is the high traffic that we will have on the WiFi network, which could cause other WiFi clients that are making basic use such as web browsing or instant messaging, to be affected by it.
Transfer very large files
Without a doubt, transferring very large files over WiFi is not recommended, because we will be hogging all the bandwidth and harming the rest of the wireless devices. If we are going to transfer small files we will not notice anything, but as soon as they are more than 1GB in size, you will surely notice how while you are transferring that file, the wireless network will start to go worse and you could even have cuts in WiFi clients.
If we use an amplifier, this effect of occupying all the bandwidth is even greater, because the traffic will not only pass from the client to the router and vice versa, but also through the repeater, causing more delays and the WiFi network almost collapsing. .
Use P2P intensively
This use case is similar to the previous one, if we use P2P intensively we will be saturating all the available bandwidth in the WiFi wireless network. We will not only do it during the duration of the download, but also during the upload of the data to share the file on the P2P network. If you plan to use P2P programs over WiFi, you should know that it is a serious mistake, because not only will you have a very low speed, but they will seriously affect the other devices that you have connected wirelessly, causing connection outages and really high latency.
As you can see, we have certain uses where it is not recommended to connect to a WiFi repeater. Instead, we can opt for Ethernet cable whenever possible, and if it is not possible, then use PLC Powerline in order to “free” the WiFi network from high data traffic. You can visit our tutorial on solve the main problems of WiFi repeaters.
