On Wednesday, 16 July 2014 11:12:57 UTC+1, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Wed, 16 Jul 2014 10:45:37 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

1) Repeater. Picks up the existing Wi-Fi signal and re-transmits it.

And knocks throughput in half in the process, only one thing can talk
at a time...

You are correct to say that the "repeater" mode which just re-transmits the main SSID does halve the bandwdth of the wireless signal, it doesn't stop multiple devices working concurrently - they will just have to share a lower performance wireless connection.

My advice is if you have a network cable just put your new wireless device into access point mode only, give it a differnet SSID and let your wireless device connect to which ever AP has the strongest signal. Auto channel selection should be OK but if you are able to determine which channels other neighbourhood APs are using you can manually select an unused channel. Just try and avoid using the bottom or top channel numbers as you get slightly less performance.