Using Airport Express as a wireless repeater - Significant drop in wireless speed I'm trying to extend wireless service to parts of my office that aren't getting a reliable connection. On one end of the office, we have an Airport Extreme, with a 60Mbps internet connection. In that room and the surrounding rooms, I get a pretty reliable 57Mbps or so on speedtest. 

I've set up an Airport express as a repeater to carry the signal further down the hall. While near the airport express, I get full wireless connection (full bars), but on speedtest, I'm getting about 18Mbps. 

We then tried putting in another Express half way in between, and saw no significant improvement. 

Could the Express be bottlenecking the connection that bad?
Any time you try repeat a wireless signal you'll sacrifice data speeds. 

This "feature" isn't highly pushed on the Airports because of this. I've seen no consumer wifi routers/repeaters that do this well. 

Your best bet is to run an Ethernet cable and setup the airport express as a second access point. Use the same SSID and password as your Extreme and your devices will pick the stronger signal.