Methods and apparatus for facilitating the deployment of a wireless extender in combination with a base station at a customer premises are described. Support is provided for data rate testing in combination with configuring one or more aspects of the system such as wireless extender and/or base station transmission power level. By using testing a system can be deployed where one or more devices may use transmission power levels which are less than the maximum permitted transmission power level while still supporting an expected data rate corresponding to a subscriber service level in a reliable manner. In various embodiments DFS channel black and/or white lists are generated for each link taking into consideration the determined transmit power to be used for a given link.