My love-hate relationship with my Verizon (Samsung) Range Extender
Guest Column
By Ben Myers, special to Network World January 31, 2013 03:01 PM ET
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I installed a Verizon Range Extender about 2 1/2 years ago and when it works it is flawless, but it is quirky.
The concept behind the Range Extender is elegant and simple. If you find yourself in a cellphone dead zone but have broadband Internet access, just plug in a Range Extender, attach a Cat 5 cable to your network, put its GPS antenna in a south-facing window, and voila! Your cellphone traffic is routed through the broadband connection to the Verizon mother ship. The GPS sensor on the Range Extender provides your physical location to your cellphones to meet FCC requirements for 911 calls.
The Range Extender has four LEDs on the front: Power, GPS, Internet and SYS. When these LEDs all show blue, the Range Extender is up and running, awaiting your outbound calls and routing incoming calls to you.
Despite its shortcomings, the Verizon Range Extender solves the cellphone dead zone problem, and it is better than nothing
at all. Most of the time. It is suitable for use in home offices and other small offices. But anyone with a network of, say,
10 or more computers to administer needs a far more robust Internet cellphone product.
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