Create a WiFi Mesh System with the NEW Nighthawk EX7700 Mesh Extender

I was very interested in this model while I was at the store earlier today. I purchased the Nighthawk EX7000 instead.

Unlike a lot of modern-age homes nowadays, our ISP who we've had since 1998-1999 (about when cable modems were available in our area)... they ran the line from the pole on the street to the "left" side of our house. Being that there was no WiFi back then, or any demand at all.. we had just ran hardlines through the house. Now we are stuck with our ISP's modem/router (Arris TG1682G) on one side of the house... and obviously the "right" side of the house, has terrible WiFi reception. We just never had a demand in our house for so much WiFi until late last year when we purchased 2 new Smart TV's, as well as a Roku and Firestick for 2 other televisions.

Our house is not large by any means, average suburbian house, 3 bedrooms, 3 floors (not including the basement... which has 1 hardline for 1 PC down there). There honestly should be no issues with our ISP issued modem/router considering the size of our house, but our kitchen and far-side of the house were lucky to get 25mbps consistently. While most streams work great regardless, we have had incidents of buffers, drops, etc in those rooms.

I just brought back the EX7000 from the store a few hours ago, I synched it to our modem/router via WPS buttons, brought the EX7000 downstairs to the center of the house, and it has certainly beefened up the WiFi signal with our new _5GEXT / _2GEXT "networks". The kitchen is getting an average of 60-75mbps, a huge improvement from the soft inconsistent 25mbps.

Our internet plan is 300mbps down / 50mbps up. We actually get the 300mbps downstream via WiFi in most of the house, besides the kitchen and the far end of the house where we have a television. Now connected through the _5GEXT Extension network everything is a lot more stable.

I am not exactly brand new to setting up routers, but I've grown tired of everyone in the house yelling at me whenever someone has a poor connection or gets disconnected. I hope the EX7000 solves this issue, I am still considering plugging it into the hardline ethernet cable we ran to the far-side of the house and trying that method I have read in the instruction manual.. but so far, a lot better. None of our hardlined PC's ever get 300mbps downstream when I do a SpeedTest, only over WiFi. Our hardlined PC's consistently pull 100mbps downstream, which is fine because I game on my PC as well as my PS4 only while hardlined into our modem/router directly.

I know I'm talking about the EX7000, I am wondering if I should have sprung for the EX7700, but for the size of our house... I don't think it is necessary. I was considering the FastLane Technology and switching to it to just use either the 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz, just to simplify things.. since I've already been asked to which is better, and after testing both.. neither seem very different from one another speedwise from the tests I've tried.