I had one of those serious first world problems where I was intermittently getting poor wireless connectivity from my upstairs bedroom at night.  My wireless router is downstairs in my office on the opposite side of the house, and my neighbors’ wireless was also causing some interference.   So I was about to get out my chainsaw to start taking out a wall and part of my upstairs floor, when I thought “Maybe a wireless extender would work for me?”

So, I went out [went downstairs where I had wireless] and purchased a Netgear AC1200 from Amazon.

One of my requirements was that whatever extender I got, had to be something that would work with 802.11ac in the event that I upgrade my Dlink DIR-825 router.  Seriously, 802.11n is so last year.

Setup

Setup of the extender was a snap.  Unbox the device, plug in the antennas and the power cable.  Take your wireless device and connect to the NETGEAR_EXT SSID.  Once you open a web browser, the setup screen pops open automatically.

The first thing you do is to select your current wireless network.  In my case I have both a 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless network, but you select the 2.4GHz only first.  You can skip this band if you only want 5GHz.

Next, you select your 5GHz wireless network if applicable.  Once that’s done, you’ll need to enter your WPA password.

Now that you’ve entered your existing network settings, you’ll want to setup you extended network.  The Admin guide recommends setting a different SSID for the network extender and connect to it when you need it.

That’s it!  Super simple setup to get you up and running.

Optional Settings

A few of the bells and whistles include things like “FastLane” which allows you to customize the bands to ensure better performance.  Since I am currently using both bands, I left this default, but you could change the settings to fit your needs.

The extender also has 5 wired ports if you’ve still got those things that need wires to get to the internet, and there is also a USB 3.0 port on the back.  The extender could be used as a media server as well as a backup device for things like “Time Machine” for Mac OS.

Performance

I wouldn’t get too concerned with the metrics below since the mileage will vary depending on distance, obstacles and interference in your environment.

Baseline

This is my baseline traffic to my Dlink router without using the extender.

All measurements are in Mbps

Netgear Extender

While using the Netgear Extender, you’ll notice that my throughput is lower which is a bummer, but expected.  The good news is that I no longer have any dropped connections to worry about.

 HollowPoints

Clearly your performance may vary, depending on your wireless signal, distance and barriers so don’t take my performance results as gospel.  This extender has solved my issue and I would say just get’s the job done.  It’s easy to use and maintain, has a few extras that you can take advantage of and just works.  I think someone looking to extend their existing network would be happy with this device.