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WiFi extender for C7000-100NAS
Hello, My kids are complaining of slow speeds with the Netgear Nighthawk WiFi speeds, and dropped connections. I currently have Cox internet, which supposedly supports 300mbps. Would a Wifi exte...
letenn wrote:Hello,
. Does that mean I have a dead spot? where I'm getting slower connection speeds?
Potentially.
Make sure any of your gaming/streaming devices are on 5ghz. Its much faster, less sensitive to interference.
Put your lower bandwidth devices (ereaders, IoT devices, tablets, etc) on the 2.4ghz.
2300sqft isn't such a large home that you'd NEED an extender if you can optimize placement of the router and which devices are on which band.
but if you can't then a extender is a reasonable choice. Something to keep in mind with extenders is that they're great at adding coverage. Your standard extender (single and dual band) will drop the throughput (speed) of the extender to half speed because it has to send/receive between router---extender and then send/recieve between the extender-----device. And it can't do both at once.
The tribands mitigate this by having a 5ghz chip just for router---extender communication. They tend to be faster and more reliable.
I would first make sure the router is getting full speed. It'd be pointless to add an extender if the router wasn't getting full speed from cox.
Another thing to check into is that recently cox changed their requirements to only supporting up to 150mbps on docsis 3.0 devices.
See this post: https://community.netgear.com/t5/General-WiFi-Routers-Non/C6300v2-not-support-cox-service/m-p/1962981/highlight/true#M142829
Maybe they haven't done it in your area but its worth checking on.
So what speed do you get hardwired into the C7000?
What speed are you getting over 5ghz?
do you have screen snip of the cable connections page and the modem logs? this lets us check the connection back to the ISP.
also, how big is your home?
And what are the interior walls made of?
Anyone can recommend an extender but first its important to figure out if you need one and if a single extender is really an ideal solution. If you're needing more than 1, sometimes its better to go with a mesh router/satellites.
Hello,
Thanks for the reply. I'll work on those questions and let you know what I find out.
Hello,
Here is what I found out:
I get 86 Mbps down, and 30 Mbps up with my I5 Laptop connected directly to LAN through cable.
I get 185 Mbps down, and 30 Up through my desktop with 5G Wifi. Is that normal for 5G to be faster than Direct connection to LAN?
My house is two story and about 2300 sq ft total. about 1250 sq ft each floor. The router is located in the master bedroom on the second floor. All the gaming consoles having trouble are also on the second floor. The walls are hollow, wood studs/drywall.
I don't know how to pull cable connections page and the modem logs, but I can with instructions.
Is your laptop gigabit?
Or try changing the cable for the laptop.
Maybe you have an old cat 5 cable and not cat 5e or greater.
hardwired should give you the fastest speed with 5ghz coming second (provided everythings gigabit). 2.4ghz is significantly slow.
we want to see what your max speed truly is. Cox might have switched your area over to the docsis 3.1 requirement for greater than 150mbps service. (they over provision which would explain the 185mbps)
2300sq ft is about the size a single router should cover if centrally placed. If its not, then an extender can help.
And it can help with dead spots that are caused by obstructions or even things like hvac in the walls.
to access the cable connections page follow this guide:
where it says click on "cable connection" you click on the icon.
Hello,
My laptop is 10/100/1000 ethernet. Is that gigabit? I ran the cable connection again with a CAT 5e cable through a couple servers and got 82-92 Mbps.
How much of the cable connection page should I post? I tried to upload, but had too many characters for the forum. I can copy and past the first part.
We've had bad streaming downstairs lately. Lots of buffering. I only have COAX in two places. One is by the TV that is currently having streaming buffering. I'm thinking about moving the router downstairs. Thought maybe the extender would work upstairs.