[danielf]

Wifi in my house is a little patchy. I've got a router Bebox TG582N (which is a Thomson 585V8 if I'm not mistaken) in the first floor study, and I get decent but patchy wireless on the groundfloor. So I decided to buy a repeater (TP-link WA730RE) to improve the wireless. I managed to get it all setup, using the same SSID, channel and security as the repeater. I ended up putting the repeater basically in a room just yards away from the router (but on the other side of the bath room and central heating water tank), and it's definitely improved wireless reception on the ground floor, with browsing being a lot more responsive, and I'm getting a better signal on my phone.

So far so good, except that my download speeds have virtually halved. Being on ADSL with a sync speed of 23MB, I get download speeds of about 20MB going hard wired through the router. Wireless, on the ground floor I can get about 17-18Mb, and when I go through the repeater I struggle to get 10Mb, even though it's got a stronger signal than the router. The problem isn't the hop from the router to the repeater. When I plug my laptop into the repeater's ethernet port, I download at 19Mb, and when I connect to it wirelessly, sitting next to it, downloads immediately drop to about 12Mb.

I'm confused, and things aren't being helped by there being no way of telling if you're connected to the router or repeater... Any thoughts?

TIA