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Seeking cost effective options for an access point - Wifi 6, wired with cat 6
I am using a CM700 cable modem and an AX1800 Wifi 6 router (RAX10) and they are working great for me. The router is setup with ODFMA and Smart Connect since that seemed to be recommended (though sinc...
KarlT0 wrote:
The language out on the netz is not always so consistent.
Oh so true.
There are for example mesh solutions, access points, and network extenders all available, wired or not wired, and on.For a Mesh extender to work, it usually has to connect to a router that also does Mesh.That's because the two devices have to talk to one another in the right way. A common approach to Mesh is to buy a bundle of router and satellites (extenders in another guise). Netgear's Orbi range sets out to do that in a simplified way.
I was surprised that Netgear says this can implement mesh with almost any router (not necessarily a "mesh" router). I didn't take advantage of that, but that looked interesting. And we do not need seamless roaming.A surprise indeed. But if you want to play around you should be able to recover some of those lost features by using the EAX20 as standard extender, with a wifi connection to the router rather than the wired AP connection.
In case anyone gets this conversation via a browser search, I wanted to jot down the concluding decision.
I was used to thinking about access points, because I had some familiarity using those in businesses where I work (software eng.). The language out on the netz is not always so consistent. There are for example mesh solutions, access points, and network extenders all available, wired or not wired, and on. So what I found eventually is the EAX20, Netgear "4-Stream WiFi Mesh Extender". It cost me a whopping $80 at my usual Best Buy and 50 feet of ethernet cable for $25. Ironically I don't want to use mesh wifi. The building structure would not be conducive and I'm pro-wiring to avoid some bandwidth degradation.
I set it up using the "access point" option, even though some cool features don't work with that and gave the newly covered area its own SSID. I was surprised that Netgear says this can implement mesh with almost any router (not necessarily a "mesh" router). I didn't take advantage of that, but that looked interesting. And we do not need seamless roaming.
The install was not without hiccups. I followed directions easily enough, but early in the install after getting preliminary work set up with the AP, I could not connect my laptop via wifi to complete the install as directed. The option was to connect via eithernet cable and that worked great.
We are up and running, and it has 4 ports and is WiFi 6 tech. So there it is, though the netz are full of evals like network extender vs. access point vs. mesh solutions, you can actually get something from each of those in one inexpensive product. I took reading 2-3 product manuals to finally scope that out. It isn't for everyone, but it meets our modest needs and building limitations perfectly.
Thanks again to Michael.
KarlT0 wrote:
The language out on the netz is not always so consistent.
Oh so true.
There are for example mesh solutions, access points, and network extenders all available, wired or not wired, and on.
For a Mesh extender to work, it usually has to connect to a router that also does Mesh.That's because the two devices have to talk to one another in the right way. A common approach to Mesh is to buy a bundle of router and satellites (extenders in another guise). Netgear's Orbi range sets out to do that in a simplified way.
I was surprised that Netgear says this can implement mesh with almost any router (not necessarily a "mesh" router). I didn't take advantage of that, but that looked interesting. And we do not need seamless roaming.
A surprise indeed. But if you want to play around you should be able to recover some of those lost features by using the EAX20 as standard extender, with a wifi connection to the router rather than the wired AP connection.
For a Mesh extender to work, it usually has to connect to a router that also does Mesh.That's because the two devices have to talk to one another in the right way. A common approach to Mesh is to buy a bundle of router and satellites (extenders in another guise). Netgear's Orbi range sets out to do that in a simplified way.
That was my understanding for a long time and I seemed to always see "mesh router" to make the distinction. e.g. "this mesh extender works with your mesh router". However on the EAX20 data sheet it uses this language:
"The NETGEAR AX1800 4-Stream WiFi Mesh Extender give you up to 1.5X better performance than a Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) extender. 4-Stream WiFi with up to 1.8Gbps†
provides fast wireless speeds. It works with your existing WiFi router & is ideal for 4K UHD streaming & gaming. Get powerful WiFi where you want it."https://www.netgear.com/images/datasheet/networking/WiFiRangeExtenders/EAX20.pdf
And doesn't this bit on the data sheet also sound like mesh?
"One WiFi Name & Smart Roaming
Seamless mesh WiFi throughout the home for all your devices."
So weird! Are they assuming customers all know a mesh router is required to do mesh and are being sloppy with the writing? Or is any existing WiFi router really going to work? In the user manual they do not use the word "mesh" anywhere in the main document text - but only as a page header to identify the product name. They might be implying that their "One WiFi Name" feature is mesh.
But if you want to play around you should be able to recover some of those lost features by using the EAX20 as standard extender, with a wifi connection to the router rather than the wired AP connection.
One goal was to have the router and "extender/access point/whatever" connected via ethernet to the router. Two reasons: 1) I have a house that started as a small house, but then had an addition built. There is a lot of concrete and brick between those parts on each floor level of the house. 2) I would expect that with cable instead of wifi connection there would be less signal degradation at the extender. And using cable I cannot use it as a standard extender. I hope that's right.
Thanks again for the discussion.
KarlT0 wrote:
One goal was to have the router and "extender/access point/whatever" connected via ethernet to the router. Two reasons: 1) I have a house that started as a small house, but then had an addition built. There is a lot of concrete and brick between those parts on each floor level of the house. 2) I would expect that with cable instead of wifi connection there would be less signal degradation at the extender. And using cable I cannot use it as a standard extender. I hope that's right.
Definitely. Wired usually beats wireless.