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Forum Discussion
Looking for Upgrade advice from R8500
Opinions matter, please share yours. I have a split level house (4 levels) 80' × 50'. I have used many wifi setups over the last 15 years and my current setup has been working, but now that the hou...
The R8500 is a pretty solid router.
the N300, not so much.
Are you using the same ssid with the N300 as you are the R8500?
Are you using smart connect on the R8500?
If so, I'd recommend disabling it and setting your devices to a specific band.
You put your home is 80x50 with 4 levels but split. Are you saying its square footage is 16,000 sqft (50x80x4 levels) or half of that at 8,000sqft (50x80 x2 because of split level)?
Either one of them is a huge home.
Even the orbi setups take multiple satellites with homes that large.
https://kb.netgear.com/000060584/Which-Orbi-WiFi-System-is-best-for-me
so how big is the home?
What are the interior walls made of?
Asking about square footage tells me you have no idea what a split level house is...The footprint of the house on the ground is 80x50 approximatly. Split level means that it is 4 half size stories (approximately 40x50each). Make 1 story a garage and 1 a basement and there ya go. Roughly 2000 sqft living space. Square footage
REALLY isn't a good metric anyway to guestimate a radio signal strength. As for building material, its your normal run of the mill drywall on wood construction, but because of the split level architecture, double the amount of walls between any radio and target (wall and possibly a floor or 2).
It has made it very challenging to cover.
As for the routers. The N300 is strictly a print server for some HP network capable printers and 3 NAS drives since I only had 1 rj45 available in that room and has its own ssid and is wired lan to lan.
The 8500 is centrally located and is also wired lan to lan. I never used the smart connect. I did try it when I first got the router, but found it would jump bands with connection lag for absolutely no discernable reason so it got turned off... lol
REALLY isn't a good metric anyway to guestimate a radio signal strength. As for building material, its your normal run of the mill drywall on wood construction, but because of the split level architecture, double the amount of walls between any radio and target (wall and possibly a floor or 2).
It has made it very challenging to cover.
As for the routers. The N300 is strictly a print server for some HP network capable printers and 3 NAS drives since I only had 1 rj45 available in that room and has its own ssid and is wired lan to lan.
The 8500 is centrally located and is also wired lan to lan. I never used the smart connect. I did try it when I first got the router, but found it would jump bands with connection lag for absolutely no discernable reason so it got turned off... lol
Silhyboy1 wrote:
Asking about square footage tells me you have no idea what a split level house is...The footprint of the house on the ground is 80x50 approximatly. Split level means that it is 4 half size stories (approximately 40x50each). Make 1 story a garage and 1 a basement and there ya go. Roughly 2000 sqft living space. Square footageI do know what split level is, its why i was questioning your numbers as thats a large home.
40x50=2000 sq ft. for each "half story". And you have 4 of them per your post. That'd be 8000sqft.
Thats why I'm questioning those numbers.
Even if your looking at that wrong and its half of that, 4000sq ft is a large home as well. I've got a 3200sq ft home and with an Orbi AC system, I use a router and 2 satellites. With an Orbi AX, i use a router and one satellites.
Its why I'm trying to clarify.
Plus the layout is key. If you're at the 4000sq ft size but the router is at one end of the home, half the signal doesn't cover the home because the signal is omnidirectional. Its why we recommend centrally locating routers. Even centrally located, a single router would struggle to cover 4000sqft.
So how much actual footage is the home? And where is the router located?
- Laugh.. thanks for the lesson... too bad we dont just use wifi inside our boxes.. it would be so much easier... ;)
Anyway, usable square footage (according to my tax bill) is 1723sqft. Its across a lower level rumpus room, office, stairs, storage, utility and bath rooms. Above this is kitchen, dining, foyer, laundry (where i currently have my 8500 as it is central to the width of the house) stairs and storage. In between these two floors is the extended 3 car garage and above the garage is 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and lots of closet space. I was just using rough measurements that i used for a gas line and concrete pad projects and guessing. I just measured it and one side is 30x29 and the other is 32x25 so 2470 sqft living space and 870sqft of garage.
Is that better? I always found that when figuring these types of things out, always estimate high so there isnt an issue down the road, but if you sounded like you wanted my correct dimensions.
I just need to cover 2400ish sqft Minimum across 2 stories at a minimum end distance of 50 feet from center. Reading further into the data hogging the orbis use, im really not even sure thats the way i want to go anyway. Thus why im asking for opinions, not black and white...Thanks for the clarifying. It does help. theres a significan different from 2400 to 4000sq ft.
I'd still consider the orbi triband or MK series (mk80 version). Especially if you're needing/wanting to use an extender. I'm not a huge fan of single or dual band extenders. They're performance isn't that great. Usually you can get a full mesh system for cheaper than you can a router + decent extender. The tribands are better but you still only want to stick with one of those. If you're needing more than 1, a mesh system is the way to go.
with your setup, this would let you put the router (or satellite) on one side of the home and the other satellite (or router) on the otherside. That would let you cover the home and get some overlap with the garage.
I'm not sure what you mean about data hogging. I've used several different mesh systems (including orbi) and haven't noticed any "data hogging" issues.