Matters needing attention in wifi signal repeater

Repeaters can extend the range of an 802.11 network, but there are a few caveats to be aware of. One caveat is that the repeater must receive and forward frames on the same channel, which means your bandwidth is effectively split in half. Although range is more important than bandwidth, clients at longer distances will see transfer rates as low as 1Mbps. Due to the overhead of 802.11, only about half of the bandwidth is available for data transmission. Again the bandwidth is split in half due to repeaters, especially when multiple users share the same channel, so you have bandwidth issues.
Another thing to be aware of is that some repeaters have only one omnidirectional antenna, while some access points (that can go into repeater mode) have two antennas for diversity. If you wish to use higher gain antennas for extended range, by all means use multiple omnidirectional antennas rather than directional antennas. Because with a diversity antenna system, only one antenna can be active at a time, it won't transmit in the opposite direction when it's busy, causing interference and retransmission problems. Using multiple repeaters generally doesn't work well. In short, the longer the wireless path, the higher the chance of failure.