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Forum Discussion
nocinc
Sep 30, 2021Aspirant
Setting up a repeater (just a WIFI extender for the Nighthawk x6 [AC3200] Model: R8000
I would like to setup my Neatgear Nighthawk x6 [AC3200] Model: R8000 as a WIFI repeater. I do not need to use the LAN ports, the least I want is to just set it near the end of my WIFI range ...
plemans
Oct 01, 2021Guru - Experienced User
Razor512 The EAX80 doesn't support a dedicated wireless backhaul. Its a dual channel extender. It does support wired backhaul in AP mode.
nocinc Razor512 is correct in that the R8000 doesn't support a repeater/extender mode. and 3rd party firmwares can produce abysmal results. If you can hardwire it in somewhere and use it in access point mode, it'd work for you.
but otherwise you'd be better off to look at an actual wireless extender. I'm a fan of the tribands. (EX7500/EX7700/EX8000)
Razor512
Oct 01, 2021Prodigy
Sorry, forgot that it didn't have the dedicated backhaul. For that one I only had a short time with it, but the performance was better than that of my EX8000 by a good margin, though I didn't feel a need to move from the EX8000 in my own network since I largely use it for a few IOT devices that use batteries, but when they want WiFi connectivity and a 2 year battery life, the transmit power is quite low (lower than many Bluetooth devices) on them (few moisture and temperautre sensors). Beyond that, it is also used for coverage of the back yard so that I can stream podcasts while doing yard work. Beyond that the RAXE500 provides great coverage for everything else.
I set it up at my friend's barn since it could communicate with his RAX200 from a pretty good distance and still provide close to 200Mbps at a distance where smartphones would struggle to hit 10Mbps. While not the use case Netgear probably had in mind, it was a cheaper solution than setting up a few Ubiquiti nanobeams and a secondary AP.
- plemansOct 01, 2021Guru - Experienced User
Never had the EAX80 to try to see how it compares with the triband extenders in both latency and speed drop.