There is a difference between what a device can do and what's designed specifically to do.
If I had those choices, I would have used them.
As it is, without an extender half way across the house, between my room and the router (old house, not much choice in terms of where to place the router, the was the best compromise), I have ~23% reception, and that is with the Mi 3/Mi 3G (same broadcasting strength), with other routers I have no reception whatsoever.
As for powerline, I'm looking into it, but same issue, old house, so I am very limited in that regard (it'll be problematic to connect more than one device to the specific outlet, due to limited space).
I understand, but by flashing OpenWrt on an extender, it automatically "loses" the stock ability to extend.
If the OEM can do it, I'm sure that the community can do so as well, without giving up on the existing stack.
TP-Link's firmware is (loosely) based upon OpenWrt, after all.
Try with the relays first (or other solutions such as travelmate if a different subnet isn't a problem).
If it didn't help and you decide that powerline is the best option, then there are some that have pass-through socket so you plug it in the wall and then you can plug an electric device to it. Some of them also have AP or multiple LAN ports.
There is actually one thing that I don't know why it didn't cross my mind earlier: WDS. Do some reading and see if your devices support it.
If it works then it's will solve your problem.
Oy, I had confused WDS with WPS, thank you very much.
I'll read into it, hopefully it will solve my issues.
And I'm pretty sure that both the Mi 3 and Mi 3G support it.
Update: No dice, neither device supports WDS.
By the way, is the bandwidth halved, regardless of the method, or just potentially halved (whatever that means)?
I'm wondering whether to try setting up a mesh network (if that is possible with my current hardware).
If WDS isn't supported then it's unlikely that mesh is.
The bandwidth is halved if you use the same band for the link between the two routers and for the AP. That's because the band is doing two jobs. This applies to all methods. If, on the other hand, you have devices with 2.4 and 5 GHz bands you can set up one band for the link and one band for the clients to connect to.
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Yes it is possible to do that. You just need to remove that port from WAN connection and then add it to the LAN bridge. Then it should work as a normal LAN port. There's nothing else you need to do.
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Thanks, I already did that last night, following this old thread from the OpenWrt archive: https://forum.archive.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=48193.
No issues there, however I am unable to access the internet from the Mi 3G and onwards now (currently connected directly to the DM200).
Thanks, I've been asking myself this question for quite some time now, and I was unable to find a satisfactory answer (I had probably misunderstood what I had read).
The two routers are connected via the 2.4Ghz band, and unless the reception is too low (such as from my room to the Mi 3), I use 5Ghz when possible.
However, in addition to that, we also have 2.4Ghz only devices, so I'll just have to accept the bandwidth being halved (until I have the money for a 4x4 router, such as the Xiaomi Mi Pro).