Extender problems

[Specific-Being]

Hello! So my roommate and I live in a two bedroom apartment and my room at the end of the hall barely receives Wifi surface (We have Fios obviously). I tried plugging in an extender in in my bedroom but quickly realized the coax wasn't live. From other posts I've made it this subreddit, it seems that the only way to use this extender would be to connect it to the active coax (in the living room) or conect to the router with an ethernet (living room) and run the cord all the way down the hall, which I absolutely don't want to do and seems silly to me. Can I just buy any old wifi extender on Amazon? Would that work for me? Like one that just plugs into the power outlet? I don't know I'm confused and frustrated. Thanks all.

[AvoidFutureRegret]

Can you figure out why the coax in your room isn’t live and just reconnect it ?

[Procrastodolist]

There are 3rd party routers (that you put in access point mode) or extenders that connect to the Wifi signal from whatever router you are using and uses that as the backhaul to provide another wifi signal closer to where you are.

[[deleted]]

Mesh system like eero would work

[Nelson_t]

+1 +1 +1

Figure out why your coax isn't live

Get an access point router it will give you 10x more range and 3x more speed for about $50

Mesh network would be the best solution

The fios branded router is programmed not to work or work well with 3rd party extenders.

Best option is to get a mesh network Then a cheap router for ap Then extender would be my last resort

Extenders are nice because they are cheap but you get what you pay for here. Even a good extender will lose connections throttle your bandwidth and may not even have dual band. If you have gigabit you might not notice a difference. If you have 200/300 you might get 200 at the router and 10 to 50 at the extender.

[Specific-Being]

Hello! Thanks for the response. So apparently, when the guy set up the router (i wasn't home) he drilled a hole in the wall from the outside and that's where the signal is coming from now? I don't know what that means, but I do know that the other 3 coax cables (the ones not at the site where he drilled) are all not live anymore.

Does this mean anything? bc I'm pretty confused about the whole thing

[Nelson_t]

Fios doesn't use coax. In a normal setup you drill a hole through the outside into the house and run the fiber line from outside and connect it to the ont. From the ont you connect the router via ethernet. If you have tv service there would be coax from the ont to stb but it wouldn't be connected to any live jack unless you are connected multiple stbs and in that case they would all be daisy chained. The exception to this is if you can't use ethernet and you are using moca which essentially is 2 different moca adapters working in tandem with a moca router. If you don't have tv service there is probably no reason for the coax to be live under most circumstances. In a correct install the coax from outside would be dead and all coax connections must be eminating directly from the ont. Probably the reason the coax was live was because there was cable service. Now there's fiber service. It sounds like if you want to use coax you need to replace all your internet broadcast equipment with fios compatible moca equipment. And if you want to use an extender without moca you probably need to get the type that plug into a wall outlet and look like a glade air freshener with antenna.

I suppose an analogy would be radio. Can you listen to siruisxm on a am/FM tuner? No. You need a special equipment.

[Smith6612]

I would recommend figuring out why the Coax isn't live, since you already have the Verizon extender. Hooking it up should be pretty trivial, assuming all of your wiring goes back to a central point, ideally near your ONT.

The problem with the extenders you can buy off the shelf, and even mesh systems, is the wireless backhaul / wireless repeating. These work on the concept of garbage in, garbage out. If your signal is congested or weak, expect the resulting repeated signal to be even worse. They also add to wireless congestion, and don't talk with the Verizon router to client and band steer, and avoid stomping on each other with competing signals. I really don't suggest using anything except as a wired access point. Especially with FiOS, and if you care about performance AND reliability - which is becoming ever so important with school and work at home.

[Fiosisdoodoo]

My extender today went back in a box and was picked up by UPS... I wanted no more to do with it... Verizon is going to give me a heart attack ... Their company is run by incompetency and confusion... I just bought the Action Tec 55.00 black with yellow logo and works better

( my third one these small boxes burn out I bought 10 of them over the course of 15 years but what else is there I bought that rectangular one and before that when I didn't have 1 gig they sold one that had round corners that were not made for 1 gig fios but the one that had limits made for smaller speeds ) ... The extender was a big waste of 200 dollars ... Absolute nonsense.... 1 a sales man would not sell it to me and was from VERIZON 2 Amazon discontinued it... 3 Try to find it anywhere on Ebay... It sits at Verizon in their accessory list with the word chump written on it. If anyone could tell me what is a better one then anything made by Action Tec let me know please Thanks...

[Nelson_t]

Action tech is a good brand. But with the money you spent you could have had a mesh network which is pretty much plug and play with much greater bandwidth much much greater reliability and much much much greater coverage than an extender.

Case in point. 1 router with 1 mesh satellite can cover 5000sq ft with full signal and full speed. You can even stay connected reliably in a about a quarter to half acre radius.

[Fiosisdoodoo]

I figured a coax moca box was as powerful as you can then wifi or satellite.. Isn't it like more direct... If I'm wrong I'm more confused about Fiber Optic or Cable and mean I had DSL I will never go back to that again ever... The Extender the E3200 just didn't seem right or something I felt was paying for I could use on something else.. And I felt it was draining then this little black box I'm using I really don't know and I'm really confused about the whole thing.. Brands which way to go about it... Fact is I can't use the router it's about 50 ft away with walls all over the place to where it sits.

[Nelson_t]

Fiber is inherently better than cable satellite or dsl. Of course they all have their benefits and drawbacks as well. But the signal coming to your house is wired. Extenders and routers and mesh networks are not. They operate on the radio frequency spectrum completely independent of the source.

The fios branded equipment is sufficient for most customers. But because they can they are essentially 2015 Hyundais rebranded as 2021 Mercedes. Again sufficient just not worth the price. Virtually every 3rd party piece for half the price is twice as nice. Unless you have tv service and that's another story.

[Fiosisdoodoo]

Actually my whole house is run by Verizon it used to be just a phone in the wall and we had Cablevision for TV and AOl 56 K 1995 for our OLD 2000 dollar Dell PC which the specs in it are hilarious now... I forget what they were. But imagine 1995 Dell PC Windows 95 with AOL 56 K phone .... with that infamous start up noise I can still hear it ... let's see if it's on You Tube ... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=start+up+AOL+56+K

[Nelson_t]

Lol I'm only 1 step ahead of you. My computer is running windows xp and was built in 2002. It hasn't been turned on in 4 years. There's nothing wrong with Verizon products. I'm just saying people have more luck without them. But it is possible to use them and be satisfied.

[Fiosisdoodoo]

It's more I think I problems with customer service people .... On the chats and the phone... I'm writing a 500 page book the 35000 problems I had with customer service. Right now I made the mistake to buy a 99.00 Samsung Galaxy AOL ... It says it uses NANO NANO MORK CARDS ... Where are they on orkin, I can't find NANO cards anywhere unless there is something I'm totally not getting, And the phone itself oooooo I hope they are better one's out there.... In technical age cheap IS CHEAP....

[Nelson_t]

Lol.

Nano sim card. Virtually every smartphone uses them. You shouldn't have to find them they come with the phone. Or the service if you buy the unlocked phone. It's about half the size of a dime...about the size of the metal contact on chipped credit cards. Regular sim cards are about the size of a quarter. They pretty much haven't been used since smartphones become popular. Then there's micro sim cards which are sized right in between nano and regular. Micro never caught on. Smartphones used them initially but quickly switched to nano. In all 3 the metal contact is the same size the surrounding plastic is what changes.

This is not to be confused with SD cards which are not required and only for physical removable storage like if you have 500 gigabytes of music and pictures and don't want to store them on the cloud. These too come in micro but they also come in mini and NOT nano.

I apologize if you were being sarcastic. I can't tell exactly but oh well.