Forword: What TP-LINK Wi-Fi Powerline Extenders can do? 

Compared with the wired powerline adapter:

The Wi-Fi Powerline adapter not only can extend your Internet connection to every room of the house through your home’s existing electrical circuitry, but also can provide the wireless access just like a wireless access point. 

Compared with the wireless repeater products:

By contrast with wireless connection, the Wi-Fi Powerline adapter can provide much more stable Internet speed via powerline communication. In addition, Wi-Fi Powerline Extender like TL-WPA4220 has Wi-Fi clone button. It can automatically copy the SSID and Password of your wireless router. In this way you can effortlessly build a roaming wireless network.

Note: About how to use the Wi-Fi clone function, please check the FAQ below: http://www.tp-link.com/en/article/?faqid=567

As we can see in the picture above, there are three wireless networks created by two TL-WPA4220s and one wireless router. All these three wireless networks have the same SSID and password.So your wireless devices can roam among these three wireless networks.

How to build a roaming wireless network between your wireless router and TP-LINK Wi-Fi Powerline Extender?

1.     Make sure there is wireless overlap region between your wireless router and TP-LINK Wi-Fi Powerline Extender.

As we can see in the picture above, the iPhone is not able to roam among these three wireless networks. Because roaming means the client needs to detect more than one wireless networks simultaneously and evaluate these networks, then choose the best wireless network to roam to.

Here there is no wireless overlap region among these three access points. So if you are walking from bed room1 to living room with a mobile phone. In position A, the iPhone can’t detect any wireless signal, and it will just lose the wireless connection. There won’t be any roaming in it at all.

So if you want a good Wi-Fi roaming experience, you need to make sure there is wireless overlap region instead of wireless blind spot, which means you can’t place your TP-LINK Wi-Fi Powerline Extender too far away from your wireless router.

2.     How to further improve my roaming experience?

Although sometimes you are sure there is wireless overlap region, you may still endure a bad Wi-Fi roaming experience like your mobile phone is always sticking to the distant wireless router and it can’t roam to the nearer TP-LINK Wi-Fi Powerline Extender like this:

You can see the mobile phone is much nearer to TL-WPA4220 while it is still sticking to the distant wireless router. At this time, I introduce another FAQ to you. This FAQ will guide you how to configure your wireless client devices to improve your roaming experience. Here is the link of this FAQ:

http://www.tp-link.com/en/article/?faqid=592

After you have followed the steps of the FAQ above, your wireless client device will be more sensitive to roaming and will roam aggressively.

3.     Here the roaming we have discussed is not seamless roaming.

After you have followed the steps above, you will successfully create a roaming wireless network. But this roaming wireless network is not a seamless roaming wireless network.

When you are walking between your wireless router and TP-LINK Wi-Fi Powerline Extender, your wireless client device will automatically choose to roam to a wireless network which has a better signal strength.

This process contains a disconnection and a re-connection like this:

1)     The mobile phone is firstly connected to the wireless router.

2)     During moving, the mobile phone detects that there is another wireless network which has a better signal strength. So it disconnects from current wireless router.

3)     The mobile phone reconnects to the TP-LINK Wi-Fi Powerline Extender which has a better signal strength.

During this process, you will experience a short time when there is no Wi-Fi. After it, you will be able to go to Internet again. This disconnect & reconnect time depends on your wireless client. Some device can complete this process so fast that you can’t even feel it. But also some client needs a little longer time to finish this process. In this case, you can feel this disconnection obviously.

4.     Summary

TP-LINK Wi-Fi Powerline Extender will offer you the same wireless network just as your wireless router’s and will create a roaming networking across your entire home or office. So your wireless devices like mobile phone and laptop can automatically roam between your wireless router and TP-LINK Wi-Fi Powerline Extender.

Sometimes you may need to do some more configurations on your wireless client devices to improve their roaming performance. At last, you should know that the roaming here we’ve discussed is not seamless roaming.