Bridge Vs. Repeater Vs. Extender : Whats The Difference in these Access Points?

Are you confused between a Bridge Vs. Repeater Vs. Extender? We help you explain these networking jargons and the use cases for each device.

Are you facing trouble in getting a stable and reliable WiFi connection at some parts of your office or home? The solutions are simple, a WiFi Repeater, or an Extender or a WiFi Bridge. Solutions are many and depend on the network architecture and your requirements. So let’s discuss the answers and find out what is the difference between a WiFi Bridge, Repeater, and Extender.

If you are having trouble getting WiFi signals in every corner of the house, you should try some essential solutions first before moving to a WiFi Extender or Repeater so something like that. The first thing that you should do is try moving the Router in the most central location as possible and check the WiFi signals. Do some more hit and trails to get the best coverage all around the house.

In case if that does not work, try upgrading to a better router if you have an older model for years. Look for dual-band routers with MIMO technology. After you have tried all this and still not getting a reliable connection, it is time for a WiFi Repeater or Extender or Bridge, whatever suits your requirement.

Bridge Vs. Repeater Vs. Extender: The Differences

Let us discuss each of these networking devices individually and understand their specific use cases before you decide which one you would ideally want.

WiFi Extender

WiFi Extender is an easy fix to extend the WiFi coverage. How does WiFi Extender Work? WiFi Extender is a kit that allows you to send WiFi signals over the electrical circuit in your office or home. It has two adapters, the first one is plugged in near the router and the second one is at the location where you need the WiFi coverage. It is ideal when you need WiFi signal outside your house, on in garage or at some place which is a bit farther away from your WiFi coverage area.

At the second terminal, you can connect an Ethernet device or a WiFi router for a second WiFi network. It is easy to setup and offers an excellent bandwidth to work with. There is undoubtedly going to be some speed loss as they are communicating with the router over WiFi. The speed also depends on the kind of wiring that you have in your house and even on the distance between the two terminals. If WiFi Extender does not work for you, you can look for a WiFi Repeater.

WiFi Repeater

A WiFi Repeater also does the same job of extending the WiFi coverage but in a slightly different way. A WiFi Repeater contains two routers like the ones we use in our day to day life. One of the routers picks up the WiFi network that you wish to extend and transfer it to the second router. The second router transmits the boosted signal, and you get more area covered.

The installation part is again smooth. You have to place the Repeater kit in the area where you can receive the existing network and get the power supply to the router. Then you have to follow some instructions provided in manual to sync the Repeater with your WiFi network. The best part about the Repeaters is the flexibility you get. You can just set up the whole thing in a few minutes and move the kit from one place to another is a piece of cake.

Do not worry about the security as the WiFi Repeater also offers the same levels of protection as traditional WiFi routers. The speed loss will be there, and in some cases, it is worse. If you have a single band repeaters, then the speed loss is worse. They have to receive and transmit each packet of data over the same channel which results in 50% of their bandwidth. It is recommended to choose the dual-band WiFi Repeaters which uses one band for transmission and another band for receiving the data packets. A repeater network with fast inbuilt processor also speeds up things. So if you choose a good one, you will surely get better coverage, reliability and minimal speed loss.

WiFi Bridge

Now you know about the WiFi Repeater and WiFi Extender and their working. Now let’s find out what is WiFi Bridge and how it is different from the above two. The repeaters and extenders are useful when you want to extend the range of the current WiFi network. But if you’re going to bridge two different systems, WiFi Bridge is used. A bridge connects two segments of a network. In commercial usage, bridges are used to divide the vast networks into smaller portions to reduce the numbers of devices connected in a section of a network.

A wireless bridge allows non-wireless devices to connect to the WiFi networks via a cable and bridge connects to the wireless network via the radio transmitter, this is called Ethernet Bridging. Let’s understand this with an example, suppose we have an Ethernet printer that cannot be connected wireless network directly. The easy solution is to use a Bridge. The Bridge will receive the WiFi signal and convert it to the wired signal and transmit to the printer. You can also connect an old PC in the same way to the wireless network by using the Ethernet Bridge.

I hope that you are clear now with the term WiFi Bridge, WiFi Repeater, and WiFi Extender. If you have got any doubt or question in your mind, feel free to comment down below.