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tahab_1's avatar
tahab_1
Initiate
Apr 21, 2020

XR500 - Best settings for range?

Hi all,

 

This is my first post on this forum. 

 

I recently moved back from college to my family home where we have 200mbp down and 20 up. This connection is provided by Virgin Media (who offer the fastest residential internet in the UK ). However, connectivity is at an all time worse in my family household. The computers in the house are connected either through wifi or powerline adapters. The Smart TVs are also connected through powerline adapters. Connectivity issues are rife. The modem that is given by Virgin Media is probably the worst you can get (anyone on VM can tell you this). Today I went out and bought an XR500 and connectivity for the most part went up. 

 

The XR500 and modem is located in the corner of the bottom floor. The second floor has bad wifi connectivity, however the 3rd floor is suprisingly very good (maintaining 200mbps +) 

 I was wondering what the best wifi settings are for the xr500 for range, I'd like to ideally give the second floor computers better connectivity and remove the powerline adapters entirely from the set up. (These adapters only get about 15mbps download and a high ping, currently wifi is about the same)  


I was also wondering if wifi range cannot be fixed past disabling smart band if there are alternatives to the powerline adapters. The antennas are also facing as the manual reccomends.

 

Any help will be appreciated!

2 Replies

  • Netduma-Fraser's avatar
    Netduma-Fraser
    NetDuma Partner
    Apr 21, 2020
    Disabling Smart Connect and connecting manually to 2.4/5GHz is your best bet. You can use a wifi analyser to find the least congested channel and change to that as well, that should give a boost in performance. Other than that there isn't much that could be done as its set to use full power to start with. I myself used the Virgin Media powerline/wifi adapters and ecountered the same issue, I ran a very long ethernet cable along skirting boards instead and worked a treat.
    • tahab_1's avatar
      tahab_1
      Initiate
      Apr 22, 2020

      So what I ended up doing last night was running a longer ethernet cable and moving the Nighthawk about 10 meters away from where it usually is and the internet on the second floor is largely quicker. (200mb down an 10 ping on wifi, weirdly the 3 / 5 bar  connection on 5ghz gives faster speeds and lower ping compared to the 2.4ghz on the second floor.) 

       

      I'll take a look at wifi analyzer and switch channels in accordance to that