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Forum Discussion
Nighthawk XR700 VS XR500 Inquiry
This question is more of an inquiry than anything else.... Originally I was going to hold off and order the Nighthawk XR700 from netgear, but ended up buying the XR500 instead since the price was mod...
Well, the answer to 1 is no, as I don't have any aggrigated devices (Hope I spelled that correctly) As for Plex Media Server No as I have plex on a WD External HD which works fine... Routers should be just that ... Routers.. But as for active antennas.. I'm not sure what that is... As I mentioned in another post that I came from a Linksys EA9500 Maxstream router which was able to stream 4k on 3 sepperate 55" Televisions and still have room for web browsing all on a 75mb connection plan without the slightest jitter or bit of lag.... The XR500 Just can't do it.. .Don't get me wrong... There's nothing wrong with the XR500 as it has a tremendous amount of information about your connection under it's hood which is what I love most about it and sold me on it, But I'm looking for happy medium of both routers... The EA9500 Doesn't have any QOS like the XR500, Nor does it have Bandwidth Monitor, Nor does it have Data Quanity monitoring... It does have a crude version of Prioritizing but it's limited to 3 devices max and really doesn't do anything when you turn it on... Once again, I'm not trying to say the XR500 is a bad router, because it's not... It's actually quite impressive.... But I'm just wondering if the XR700 would be more like my EA9500... The gaming aspect of the XR500 Works flawlessly when playing online games... it does slow all the other connections down so I don't get any lag what so ever. and the device prioritization does the same.... As the main reason I got this router was to be able to control the amount of data going through each device on the network so it doesn't interfear with with my online gaming as some people in this household don't give the slightest crap of other peoples connections when it comes to their own... So... Yes... The XR500 is doing it's job...
comparing the XR500 to a linksys EA9500 is apples to oranges.
Reason why is the EA9500 is a triband device.
the XR500 and XR700 are dual band devices designed for gaming.
In the EA9500, you have 2x 5ghz bands that you can seperate out so you could have 2x tv's on each 5ghz band. 4k uses a significant amount of data and having them on 2 different 5ghz bands is ideal. (hardwired is best)
Maybe you're in a great area and you just need to optimize what wireless radio your on.
The XR500 isn't triband and is quite a bit cheaper for that reason. Its still a bit expensive because of the 10g port.
What you could do? if the EA9500 still works?
Run the XR500 as primary router so you keep all the features you want.
Connect the EA9500 to it and run it in AP (access point) mode. access point mode disables the routing features and leaves them to the primary router. It leaves whe wifi usable and the ethernet ports.
That way you still have the features of the dumaOS with monitoring and you have multiple 5ghz bands to use for seperating out devices.. You'd just want to make sure the wireless channels were seperated out a bit to spread them around.
Thanks for the response, and I also have to appologize forgetting that the EA9500 was a triband... That was something I completely overlooked. What would possess me to think the Guest Network was a sepperate band is beyond me... Your solution might be the answer I was looking for... This would help me by not having to spend more money on hardware and possibly help me achieve the same goal as I was trying to.. As mentioned, I'm extremly impressed with the XR500's GUI and really don't want to loose that as it's proven alrealy to be very benificial.. Just one extra question regarding this, would I be wise to disable the WIFI on the XR500 if the EA9500 is being used as an access point ? I live in an appartment, so I'm not adding an access point to extend the network for distance, but to also give me 8 extra ethernet ports to use.. Unfortunatey I wont be able to give you a respones back on the solution right away due to the fact that I'm going to be tearing this system apart in the next couple of weeks to clean everything (IE:Running wire channels to hide the wires and give this room a new coat of paint) But I will follow up at a later date to let you know how it all worked out.. Once again, I thank you for your advice... It's muchly appreciated..
Yes you can do that with the Linksys router.
