I felt that the internet environment at home had recently worsened, so I tried to improve it.

The internet line is "Docomo Hikari 1 Giga," so it should output a maximum of 1 Gbps.

I also considered "Docomo Hikari 10 Giga," which surprisingly seemed possible for about 2,000 yen more per month, but I didn’t want to increase the running costs significantly, so I gave up.

Honestly, I'm not very knowledgeable about networking, but it seems that the maximum communication speeds are set according to the specific standards as shown below.

We used NTT's PR-500KI (ONU) as a Wi-Fi router without modification.

Upon checking the back, it noted "IEEE802.11b/g/n" and "IEEE802.11a/n/ac."

Cross-referencing it with the table above, I think "IEEE802.11b/g/n" indicates the 2.4GHz band, while "IEEE802.11a/n/ac" indicates the 5GHz band.

If that’s the case, then the maximum speed for the 2.4GHz band is 600Mbps and for the 5GHz band is 6.9Gbps.

However, since the Docomo Hikari internet line has a maximum of 1Gbps, 5GHz is likely also limited to a maximum of 1Gbps.

We live in a wooden two-story house, and the Wi-Fi router is located in the corner of the first floor, while my workspace is in the opposite corner on the second floor, which makes the distance quite far.

With the air conditioner or heater running and the door closed during summer or winter, the internet environment was quite strained.

The speeds were as follows:

2.4GHz

5GHz

Those are quite disappointing numbers.

By the way, on the first floor, when using the 5GHz band, I was getting around 300Mbps.

Introducing a Repeater

After researching, I found various countermeasures, but installing a repeater seemed to be the simplest solution to solve the distance issue, so I decided to go with it.

(There were opinions that running a LAN cable directly would be more certain, but I disliked the idea of pulling a cable through the gap in the door all the way to the second floor...)

I also considered upgrading the Wi-Fi router to a better one, but since there are limits on the Docomo Hikari service, I thought it might not have much effect to buy the latest 11ax compatible router, so I decided against it this time.

Thus, I purchased this product.

TP-Link RE450/A

The compatible standards and maximum communication speeds are as follows:

• 1300Mbps (11ac)
• 450Mbps (11n)
• 54Mbps (11a, 11g)
• 11Mbps (11b)

Additionally, it is said that typically when using a repeater, the speed gets halved, but dual-band simultaneous connection repeaters are exceptions to this rule.

The setup was easy when I followed the instructions in the manual.

Since it’s a type that only needs to be plugged into an outlet, it was very convenient in terms of location.
(However, as noted in the reviews, it does take up two outlet spaces...)

After installing it right at the top of the stairs on the second floor, the network speed in my room on the second floor improved as follows:

2.4GHz

5GHz

Both are around 100Mbps, so it’s definitely much better than before...!

Conclusion

By introducing the repeater, I saw improvements in internet speed.

I want to see how it goes from tomorrow onwards and whether the improvements last, and I will update if there are any changes.

Addendum

About a month has passed, and I would like to give a status report.

Firstly, I think the issue of radio waves not reaching due to physical distance has been quite resolved.

I feel that the frequency of audio delays during online meetings has decreased.

On the other hand, since our family has four members who each use a lot of bandwidth for gaming and videos, there are still instances where the internet suddenly disconnects.

I think the only way to fundamentally resolve this issue would be to upgrade the provider's plan to 10GB.

Further Addendum

I finally introduced Docomo Hikari 10GB, and I wrote about it in a separate article.