It really just depends on the layout of the place, the building materials, and the amount of interference you're dealing with. I do fine in my place with a 5GHz signal, and mine's two floors plus a basement with a ~900 sq ft footprint. My router is close to center of the house on the upper floor, and I don't have trouble getting it all the way down in the basement. Mine's just an old N900 router, and it does fine.

Really, the best option might be to just find one locally that you can return without too much of a hassle and give it a try. If it doesn't work, consider something with more umph or a mesh system like Google WiFi. I've never had great luck with wireless repeaters, personally.

Most normal routers can function as an access point. The key, as he mentioned, is being able to have Ethernet running between them. If you don't have that, I wouldn't try going that route.

The savings over time is worth it. My ISP (Suddenlink) has never blamed any issues I've had on my modem over the years. **** modem rental charges.

Yeah, it all depends on environmentals. Placement of the router and antenna orientation make a big difference too simply because of the shape of the radiated signals.

Wireless repeaters automatically have your bandwidth even if they work. I don't personally like them.

Exactly.

A wireless access point is basically a wireless base station with no router function. A lot of consumers have a "router" mode and an "AP" mode, so they can really function as both. You just don't want to hang another router off of your main router as that will cause issues like double NAT and firewall stuff.

The key is connecting them via cables. If you have relatively good electrical cable through your house, you could try power line adapters too.

Suddenlink (from what I understand) is extremely customer friendly.

If you've ever had Comcast or Mediacom, you might think twice about your stance. Trust me.

Mildly off topic, but if you run multiple APs, do you prefer to name them all the same and pretend like it's all one network or name them differently and let the device pick which one it wants? I've never really come up with a definitive answer to that one.

Had Mediacom before Suddenlink, never had an issue with them either...at least blaming issues on my modem.

I prefer to name them all the same but most of the tech heads at DD-WRT forums think I'm an idiot. :D

Mediacom is terrible. I have several friends who have issues with them constantly and if you have your own modem and router instead of their Xtream branded stuff, they treat you like garbage.

Yeah, that's been my approach when I've done it (though I haven't often). I mainly just hate having to tell a guest which one they should connect to.

I switched to google WiFi around when they were first released and understand there are quicker systems now. Basically as no effort as it gets if you just want to plug it in and things work. Had a pretty solid Archer router before that and the extra mesh points gave me full blast 5 ghz throughout my house and back to my detached garage.

I couldn't imagine putting Google network probes in my house. :eek:

Yeah a fair point. While they are just an innocent mesh router I’m sure Google has done something with them to collect even more data from me.

ROFL