Pair Z-Wave device near hub or in final place?

[JDRoberts]

See point 3 in the following post:

A Guide to Wireless Range & Repeaters

One more thought. While I understand the marketing reasons for the decision, the fact that SmartThings gives customers zero guidance on how to set up a network backbone does lead to a lot of frustration that shouldn’t have to exist. if people knew that .1) The hub should be located centrally in the home, both vertically and horizontally. Don’t put it in a garage or basement as those have concrete and pipes and metal objects which will reduce signal. If your Internet router is off in some inaccessible corner, you can use a Wi-Fi access point that has a ethernet port on the side and plug into that. Also, the hub should not be put in a cabinet. You just want to make it as easy as possible for signal to spread around your house. .2) you need one device that can repeat about every 40 feet…

As @rboy said, zwave plus and the older zwave classic devices work somewhat differently in this regard. So as always the first rule of home automation applies: “the model number matters.“

If they are zwave classic devices, you may have to pair them close to the hub to get them added to the network, then move them to their final location, then after everything is in place run a zwave repair to get the most efficient routing.

If they are Z wave plus devices, they can join the network as long as they are within range of any repeater on that network, but you will still get the best results if you start from the hub and work outward with all your Mains powered devices, Then go back to the hub and work outward for all your battery powered devices.

Almost forgot… The exception to all of the above is zwave door locks.

Locks

For security reasons, some older Z wave door locks require being within “whisper distance“ of the hub when they first join the network so that an encrypted security key can be exchanged. This is typically about 2 m. And that is independent of any repeaters that the lock will eventually use, Because only the hub can issue the security key. (newer devices using S2 security can handle this differently.)

Anyway, if you have one of these locks, to be honest it’s usually easier to move the hub next to the lock rather than the lock next to the hub.

This is particularly true for locks like the Schlage models which have to do a calibration step as part of set up. if you don’t have a really really long ethernet cable, you can always plug the hub into the Ethernet port on the side of a Wi-Fi access point if that helps any.