NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Installing NETGEAR XWNB5201-100UKS 500Mbps Powerline Wi-Fi Extender/Access Point Kit
I'd be grateful for some advice before I mess up !
Currently I have a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 Router (and a Fibre Modem from Zen). The Netgear produces a great signal throughout most of our very thick-walled and rambling house but not in the kitchen. Thus trying to solve that, allowing a Smart TV to work there, by having ordered the XWNB5201 Powerline Wifi extender kit. The goal is to link the Wifi Access Point to the R7000 by Powerline and have the Smart TV connect to the access point wirelessly (because of the layout of the kitchen, it is not feasible to have the Smart TV connect to the Acccess Point by ethernet)
My questions are:
1. I've used all of the ethernet ports on the R7000 - will it be a problem if I "create more" by using a standard ethernet hub between the R7000 and the adaptor (XAV5201) ?
2. When I come to set up the Access Point (XWN5001) Wifi, my gut feel is to give it a different SSID and password from the SSID of the R7000 - and then have the Smart TV connect to the Access Point wirelessly, after "forgetting" the R7000's SSID. Is that ok ? Or is there instead some specific advantage to trying to use the same SSID ?
(The only other product which I plan to connect to the Access Point wifi is my wife's phone as it is only 3G and the R7000 does not reach it when she is in the kitchen. So she will presumably subsequently move between wireless networks as she moves around the house)
4 Replies
1) no it won't. However I personally would connect the powerline adapter directly into your R7000, and allow other equipment to connect through the switch
2) no problem with this idea either. Separate SSID and password will work fine with your R7000, maybe consider a different frequency channel. And yes once your wife's phone knows the password to both wireless networks it will switch between the two depending on which one it can connect to
Hope this helps
Thank you clithes that is very helpful.
I already had a TP Link on the router (used for an ethernet only powerline TP Link upstairs for the CCTV box). I found that the Netgear 5001 paired fine with that.
All the way in the kitchen, the 5001 has a red light on the "quality" display. And the TV streaming works fine.....until it starts buffering at odd times during a programme on iPlayer or Netflix. On one occasion, trying to stream Amazon Prime, I got a message on the tv screen that I did not have sufficient bandwidth (but we have a good speed fibre service here and have never had a problem streaming wirelessly to smart tv's in the rooms closer to the R7000 router.)
I don't know what to do about the red quality light - if I move the 5001 into the dining room, I get a green quality light but the wireless between their and the tv is poor because the kitchen was an extension many years ago and the wall beteen the dining room and the kitchen is a thick, originally-external wall.
Any suggestions would be warmly welcomed !
What connection rating / model are the TP Link units ? If they are a lower data transfer rate than the Netgear kit your Wifi extender will only transfer data as fast as the TP Links can handle
