WiFI range extender

Hi guys, I hope this question is appropriate here.

I did a few things but I'm not too sure I understand how it works or if I could have done it differently.

I bought a Zuni ZR301F range extender a few days back when Newegg had them as a Shell Shocker.

It got here and I set it up as a range extender.

There were quite a few strange things during setup, and I'm not going to go through most of them right now, but my question basically pertains to how the automatic setup configured this.

It told me to add an extension to the SSID of my WiFi network. Thus if my SSID is AAAAA, it had me make the Zuni's SSID AAAAA-Ext. It now seems we have to explicitly log on to that SSID. I would have thought that it should extend the same AAAAAA SSID?

Secondly, if I put it in a weak signal area, won't it simply have weak/slow transmission between it and the originating WiFi router?

Would I be better off to configure it as a separate SSID and place it in a position I can attach it to an Ethernet that is attached to my router?

Lastly, I have FIOS WiFi router and at some point in time during the configuration proacess, I could see the Xuni as a device on the FIOS Routers information page in a web browser. However, as soon as the Zuni became operational and active, it suddenly represented itself as a MAC-address rather than an IP address. That is really weird and I don't understand that. Is there anywhere I can read up more on rande extenders ans so forth? I suspect there is a whole lot that I don't understand.

Hmm.. now I've asked alsmot all the question I wanted to ask.

It should have the same SSID and it should have DHCP turned off.

Yes, if it is at the edge of your wireless range, it will have minimal effect since it will cut that bandwidth in half in repeater mode.

The best thing to do is use it as a wireless AP, so: run a CAT 5e cable to it from an LAN port on your router, turn off the Zuni's DHCP service, use same SSID but different radio channels, assign the Zuni a static address in your network range but outside the DHCP assignment range (so for example if router gateway address is 192.168.0.1, allow router to assign 192.168.0.2 -- .99 and give the Zuni a static address of .100). Place the Zuni out past the edge of the current wireless strong signal and it will provide a much larger seamless signal area.