I just purchased the R7000 Nighthawk router and while the speed increase has been fantastic the range has not been great. Setup was simple, I installed it in my basement where my old DLINK N router was and got everything working great then discovered the signal died when I go up to the second floor of my house. So I'm looking for an extender to put up on my second floor. I found the EX6200 which seems to be the best netgear has to offer right now. I want the best possible signal from the R7000 to the EX6200. So can I just connect the two with an ethernet cable from a LAN port on each rather than try to use a wireless connection between the two? I already have an ethernet cable run to the second floor. I was thinking that'd be better than using wireless to connect the two units. Thanks for your help.

Saw this in the EX6200's manual:CAUTION:Do not use an Ethernet cable to connect the extender to a WiFi router. Ifyou do so, the extender does not work because it is designed to use only aWiFi connection to a WiFi router. Guess this method is out. So I'd need a second R7000 in order to use the wired connection to extend to my second floor. I just don't know if the EX6200 could see the R7000 in my basement reliably enough to trust the connection. I'd rather use the wire. If that means $70 more I may have to just do it. Any other suggestions are welcome. My next question is if I use a second R7000 can the WAN port be used in bridge mode or will it take up a LAN port. I'll be searching the manual for that. Thanks.

You need a AP, you could get another 7000 and use it in AP Mode connecting them with Cat xx cable.

If you want to use r7000 as second unit then follow this http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/23814

Thank you for the replies. The AP setup sounds like what I want to do but the manual says the AP should not have the same SSID and password as the main router. What I'm shooting for is this: As I move around my house I don't want to have to manually switch wifi networks. I want it to be seamless as in a repeater setup. My concern with a repeater setup is that I won't have enough signal from the router in the basement to make a fast connection to the repeater on the second floor. Which is why the AP setup wired to the router in the basement would be ideal.I guess the other option is to go the repeater route and then it doesn't really matter where I put it. I can put it on the first floor and hope to get a good signal on the second floor. In that case I could just get the EX6200 rather than another R7000 which would save a few bucks.

R7000 Nighthawk wired to EX6200? | NETGEAR Communities

15 Replies

Retired_Member
Jun 09, 2014
You need to get it out of the basement. Forget the antennas unless you're getting a set for the clients as well.
jmizoguchi
Virtuoso
Jun 09, 2014
You are in the bad place... You do not want to any more that -50 reading on signals.

Place the router in the first floor would more suitable and place another extender and spend more money. If broadband modem is located in the basement and can not move then try find the way to run ethernet cable to the first floor.
S1DIMMER
Aspirant
Jun 10, 2014
So I think the original error I made was trying to hook up all my N devices to the 5Ghz band instead of using the 2.4Ghz band. 2.4Ghz seems to have way better signal strength. So I have the R7000 hooked up as an access point in my second floor office and I went around the house and took signal strength readings in a bunch of rooms on each floor and came up with an average signal strength:

2.4 5 old Dlink N
AVG 2ND FL 34 46 58
AVG 1ST FL 44 65 63
AVG BASEMENT 49 74 41

I may try the R7000 as an access point on the first floor and redo the signal readings. Probably not tonight as it's late now. Thanks again.
S1DIMMER
Aspirant
Jun 14, 2014
So I moved the router to the first floor and it's working reasonably well. I have a usable signal all over the house, at least on the 2.4Ghz band. Second floor also worked but seems a shame to spend the money for this router then use it as just an access point. So I'm going to pickup some higher gain antenna and try it again in my basement replacing my DLINK router. If that doesn't work I may just put it back in my office on the second floor and keep the DLINK in place as the main router. In the future I'll remember to run at least 2 cat 5e or cat 6 cables to each room instead of just one.
jmizoguchi
Virtuoso
Jun 23, 2014
Placing the router at top or bottom floor or adjacent from where you want active is never a good. Centrally located is always the better results as you seen when placed in first floor to cover 2nd and ground floor.

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R7000 Nighthawk wired to EX6200?