Differences between a repeater and an access point

For most tech-minded, tech-minded people, a trip to a local computer store is a fairly routine and common exercise. For others, it may be a less frequent trip, but still necessary to buy and learn about the various technical devices on which we have come to depend today. But if you shop around the networks section of your local PC store to see what is on offer at the time and what new devices have hit the shelves, you will find access points and signal repeaters.

What is this? It sure sounds like hearsay but you don't really know the difference between them. In this article we will make everything very clear for you to understand.

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Differences between a repeater and an access point

Wi-Fi access points and Wi-Fi range extenders, or repeaters, are wireless network hardware solutions that perform specific tasks within a network.

What is a WiFi repeater?

Repeaters, also called extenders, are wireless devices that do exactly that. They connect to your existing Wi-Fi network (after some configuration) and then propagate a new Wi-Fi signal from your own Wi-Fi connection to give a new signal that will be transmitted to somewhere where the old signal does not arrive.

While repeaters really do give a boost to an existing network, you need to consider whether this type of boost is what you're really looking for, since the more simultaneous users on a Wi-Fi network have connected wirelessly to a router, the more small will be the part of the bandwidth that each user gets.

A repeater, connected via WiFi, becomes one of those concurrent users. Therefore, if you have 20 MB of actual bandwidth on the main router, and you have 10 connected WiFi clients, you will have approximately 2 MB for each. If one of these is your new 150Mbps high-speed repeater, you will have an initial bandwidth of 2MB to share with anyone who subsequently connects to that repeater.

The initial bandwidth, or backhaul, is your starting number on a repeater. If it starts low, you are only going in one direction: lower and lower.

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It is a suitable solution for certain purposes. Home users with fewer WiFi client devices would find such performance acceptable. Similarly, if you are connecting your main wireless router to this repeater without any other device connected directly to the main wireless router, you will get better performance. Essentially, you create a higher bandwidth backhaul connection between the repeater and the router, and then you can provide primary access to wireless clients through the repeater located somewhere more strategic in the house than the main router.

But if you have now decided that perhaps a repeater is not the best solution for you. What other option is there?

And a Wi-Fi access point?

Wi-Fi access points create the initial radio frequency signal point that is used to connect wireless devices to a network; Wi-Fi access points are transceivers and do not create a real network.

In order to do anything with a Wi-Fi access point, you need to connect it to a router. The Wi-Fi access point uses the radio-based network (wirelessly) to connect devices to the network as if they were wired devices. In addition to creating the original signal, some access points have the ability to be re-configured as signal repeaters.

The difference between a repeater and an access point

In the same way that repeaters are an auxiliary wireless base station for a given network, access points also provide this wireless connectivity that you desire in that particular part of your network. However, instead of repeating the signal, they take a direct supply (generally through a Cat6 cable if possible (but Cat5e does not work for us too)) from the router directly to the rear of the access point.

With reliance on wireless backhaul removed from the equation, all the data that needs to come and go between the access point and the router will be through a network cable. Considering that today network cabling can push between 100MB and 1GB per cable, this is a huge improvement over our suggestion of 2MB via repeater.

So now you can see where access points actually make their own business arguments for results.

To provide this type of network, however, it is necessary to provide a physical layer (the cabling). In buildings with existing network ports and a communications cabinet, this is not a big problem. You simply connect the access point in a given area and then reconnect the access point to the communications cabinet to finish where you need it on any physical device that is required.

However, in other cases, this type of cabling is inappropriate or simply not feasible.

But not all is lost. You can use wireless bridges or powerline adapters. Just remember for now that, regardless of type, they provide the physical layer for connectivity.

Many routers allow you to choose between a normal router, access point, Wi-Fi repeater and even as a Mesh network (the latest in the latest in Wi-Fi technology).

So there you have it. Wireless repeaters are useful wherever you want low-bandwidth solutions without the hassle of cabling, while access points are handy where it doesn't matter to put a little wiring in to safeguard a better transfer rate on the Wi-Fi network.

Final words and conclusion

Wi-Fi access points create the original wireless network signal, while range repeaters receive and relay that signal to other devices to increase the range of the network.

Some Wi-Fi access points can be configured to function as repeaters, but repeaters cannot be configured to function as access points.

The access point is a device connected by cable (Cat5) to your main router, and serving clients wirelessly.

The repeater is a wireless network device that repeats wireless signals to extend the range without being wired to your router or your Wi-Fi clients. The advantage of using a repeater is that there is no need for a cable between the router and the repeater. But we believe that since the launch of Mesh networks these technologies will become obsolete very soon. Have you learned the difference between an access point and a Wifi repeater? We want to know your opinion!