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Forum Discussion
Circle 1st Gen vs Circle on Netgear vs Circle Home Plus
Writing this for 2 reasons: 1: I hope someone will tell me I'm wrong and have missed something 2: If not, maybe it'll make it clearer for others in the future. Background: We've had a Disney ...
Thanks for this discussion. I am not a techie all. I bought a Nighthawk router in January to monitor WiFi/internet. I found the free version of Disney Circle helped, but did not have everything I want, i.e., time limits, bedtime, etc. I was about to upgrade to premium when I realized that there is a whole new Circle out there (2nd gen). Apparently I wasted my money on the router in January, because what I really needed was just the Circle Home Plus cube. I'm not sure whether to:
(a) Leave the Nighthawk router hooked up to the WiFi device provided by ATT and then add the Cube to it while disabling the Disney Circle parental controls that came with the Nighthawk router (1st gen) or
(b) Ditch the Nighthawk and add the Cube directly to the ATT router.
I was hoping to have better WiFi in the bargain, but that hasn't really been the case. Reading some of the info out there, though, maybe Disney Circle (1st gen) is what is holding it up?
Any ideas? Will I get better WiFi by using ATT's router --> Nighthawk --> Cube or getting the Nighthawk out of the way and using ATT router --> Cube?
Thank you for any help!
From my experience, you would be unlikely to see improvements in your wifi by adding a Circle device. It acts as a "traffic cop" for your network, so all the data going through your router generally will have to go through Circle as well. In my case, Circle caused a very measurable decrease in my internet speeds.
I am surprised your Nighthawk router did not improve wifi over the ATT router. Did you make any changes to the ATT router at all or just plug in the Nighthawk? If you just plugged in the Nighthawk, are you seeing 2 separate wifi networks? If so this might be why you didn't see performance go up. You might want to consider contacting ATT and asking them to walk you through setting up "IP Passthrough" - you could try to read this link as well but it does get technical.
If it were me, I'd try this:
1) Configure the ATT router to be a passthrough device and turn off any of its onboard wifi
2) Connect the Nighthawk to the ATT router, bring up your wifi network, then do a speed test from a kid's wireless device (I personally like fast.com for the speed test)
3) Connect Circle to the Nighthawk and setup a kid's profile. Add the device from step 2 to the kid's profile, then repeat speed test.
If you don't see much difference between 2 and 3 then finish setting up Circle profiles. If the speed difference is a problem, you may want to return the Circle device. In my experience it never got any better, only worse. What has worked for me - mostly - is using Microsoft Family. It isn't as feature rich as Circle, but it is FREE, works across every Windows computer in my house, and I've seen no issues with speed. I only wish it worked on cell phones too!
I guess I'm in the same boat as everyone here. Just bought an RBR50 Orbi router and have an existing 1st generation circle device. I was hoping to either use my circle device with the new router or use the built-in circle on the router.
I'll try plugging the old circle device in and see what happens. I didn't have too many issues with it so might as well use it. Performance wasn't bad either, but we weren't pushing it hard and only the kids devices were being managed.
I never used circle for monitoring kid's mobile devices when they were away from our home wifi, we just depended on the Verizon smart family app for managing cellular data access.
Thank you for taking the time to reply!
- Just a quick update. I connected my 1st generation Circle device to my new Orbi router and everything just worked. No need to do anything at all, since I didn't change my network name. The devices managed by Circle are limited to 100Mbps since the Circle device doesn't support gig ethernet, but that's fine with me. I could setup Circle on the Orbi and get better speeds but that requires a monthly subscription and lots of setup.
I also connect my 1st Gen Circle to my Orbi so I don't have to pay for the subscription. Still works fine at home. But since Circle Go went away, coupled with the fact that Circle does not cover laptops away from home, I've had to come up with some other solution (which I'm still not happy with) to cover their devices when away from home. I subscribed to NetNanny for the cell phones and laptops but now when the kids devices are home, both Circle and NetNanny are controlling the devices and makes it difficult to determine which service is causing a connection problem. NetNanny's parental controls are not as good as Circles nor does NetNanny provide history or usage like Circle.
Because I am not happy with the NetNanny solution, I have two questions...
1) Is going with the premium subscription (using my Costco Orbi or buying a 2nd Gen Circle Cube) the only way to monitor the cell phones away from home using Circle?
2) Any recommenders on how to monitor the kids windows laptops when away from home? Thanks for the previous posts. It is very helpful!