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I'm trying to extend wireless service to parts of my office that aren't getting a reliable connection. On one end of the office, we have an Airport Extreme, with a 60Mbps internet connection. In that room and the surrounding rooms, I get a pretty reliable 57Mbps or so on speedtest.

I've set up an Airport express as a repeater to carry the signal further down the hall. While near the airport express, I get full wireless connection (full bars), but on speedtest, I'm getting about 18Mbps.

We then tried putting in another Express half way in between, and saw no significant improvement.

Could the Express be bottlenecking the connection that bad?

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Any time you try repeat a wireless signal you'll sacrifice data speeds.

This "feature" isn't highly pushed on the Airports because of this. I've seen no consumer wifi routers/repeaters that do this well.

Your best bet is to run an Ethernet cable and setup the airport express as a second access point. Use the same SSID and password as your Extreme and your devices will pick the stronger signal.

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  • I was expecting signal loss, but over 70%? That's surprising.
    – Dennis
    Nov 10, 2011 at 1:07
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    Even an Airport Extreme extending another Airport Extreme cuts the throughput in half.
    – Chris Peters
    Nov 10, 2011 at 2:00
  • Chris nailed it; we had a similar setup and ran an ethernet cable for much improved service. However, if you don't have a late model AirPort Extreme base station maybe the best idea is to upgrade your main router. I bought a new AirPort Extreme (the current one) and the range was so much improve and I eliminated the Express.
    – Richard
    Nov 10, 2011 at 3:59

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