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Forum Discussion
Nighthawk R8000 working as router to Nighthawk Mesh?
Hello,
I have an R8000 and it does a pretty decent job, but I need much wider range following home extension and a couple of kids growing up fast.
I've currently a mix of home-plugs and old routers acting as APs to expand coverage around the house. It's a pain to manage and devices get confused when moving between them as we roam the house.
I was looking at a 'whole home' mesh system and they all seem to come with a router and 1 or 2 satellite mesh units... can I buy the (cheaper?) satellite mesh units and have them work with the R8000 as the base router for the 'whole home' wifi experience?
If not, is my R8000 now redundant if I go for a new whole home mesh system?
Most rooms have a LAN port in them now, are there any other ways to achieve a whole house system all managed from a single point? (and hopefully with the R8000 as the management device?)
Thank you very much for your thoughts.
1 Reply
The full mesh systems need a mesh router controlling it which the r8000 isn't.
running 2 routers on a network can cause issues if both are in router mode. But you can do it if one's in access point mode.
You can use the R8000 as the primary router/backup wireless and then use a mesh system like orbi for primary wireless. You'd just want the orbi in access point mode. I've done something similar with a setup and just put on my IoT devices on the primary router and then use the mesh for overall coverage.
Or you could simply use the mesh and hold onto the r8000 as backup.
Or you can simply sell lthe r8000 to recoup some of the costs of upgrading to mesh.
