ᐅ Wi-Fi Repeater or Access Point?

In our new house (ground floor, upper floor, basement with about 140 m2 (1507 sq ft) of living space), every room has a network cable connection (CAT-7 simplex). Both Wi-Fi and wired network are planned for us. We can either place the router in the hallway on the ground floor and extend the signal to the basement and upper floor using repeaters. A CAT-7 duplex connection is planned in the hallway for this. Alternatively, we could install the access point with the router in the basement. I’m not sure which solution is better. Apparently, repeaters don’t always work very well.

Does anyone know if access points are significantly better? If several access points are distributed throughout the house and connected to the network by cable, where should the router be located? In the basement? Will the Wi-Fi reception on the upper floor be good? How exactly does this work? Many thanks.

I would advise against using a repeater. A repeater significantly reduces the data rate (by up to half), which can be critical nowadays. Especially for streaming, VoIP, and similar applications, this can cause issues.

I would recommend placing one access point in the basement and another on the upper floor. In theory, this should also provide good coverage on the ground floor. Depending on the model, you can configure the access points to support so-called roaming. However, this is often a feature found in high-end devices and requires some knowledge and skill to set up properly.

(Here you can also find some discussions about it: https://www.hausbau-forum.de/threads/netzwerkkabel-in-jedem-Zimmer.16294/)

Planning the access point. I’ll be glad when we get rid of our repeater. Roaming doesn’t work reliably.

There are also discreet access points available for ceiling installation. For example, check out Ubiquiti. Run a LAN cable directly to the device.

Also an option.

Important point: If you are going for access points, I would strongly recommend buying APs with Power over Ethernet and placing a suitable switch in the basement (or a power injector in the basement… sometimes it even comes with the access point). This way, you can avoid having a power supply in the hallway/...

ONeill schrieb:
There are also discreet access points for the ceiling. For example, check out Ubiquiti. Run the LAN cable directly there.

That’s also an option.

Alternatively, you can buy a very flat one and hide it behind a dresser or similar. I don’t really see a particular benefit in placing an access point on the ceiling.

Would also work for access points instead of repeaters.