Using Nighthawk LAX20 LTE router, Nighthawk MK63 and RBK50 Orbi! Trials and help available.

[ChezStevens]

Hi folks,

My first post here, but I have previously been trawling the pages for help. Brilliant community 👏.

We live in a stone farmhouse in South-West France, lovely but getting decent internet in the countryside can be problematic! Over the last 20 years, we have had dialup, satellite, adsl and now 4G. Not only getting the internet into the house, it is then moving it around so all can access it; with 2-3 foot thick stone walls between rooms this can be expensive (and frustrating) very quickly.  We bought the RBK50 some 4 years ago and it left us cold (real problems with software and I had a spinal cord tumour to sort out) ... so left the Orbi RBK50 in the cupboard whilst we tried 5 Google pucks on the adsl that was a mere 15mbps down, 0.7mbps up (!).

Then, SFR & Orange put 4G some 4-5 miles from us but we got a decent signal on the second floor (out of a velux window). I bought a Nighthawk LAX20 LTE and Nighthawk MK63 to push 30-40mbps down, 20mbps up (€30 for 400Gb data) that lived in the walk-in wardrobe; Netgear support staff have been outstanding helping me to set a reasonable wifi6 around the house. I thought about adding another MS60 to the rest; then I had a light bulb moment. Dragged the Netgear Orbi RBK50 out, ordered another Orbi RBK53 (3 RBS50s & €320), and set this up as an AP behind the Nighthawk LAX20 (quietly thinking old RBK50 pair will be spares when we have a failure), with 2 daisy-linked RBS50 getting to the Sitting Room end of house (remember those stone walls? My wallet does). We will not get decent speeds for 10 years (Wifi5 not Wifi6, so going backwards) so we don't need the latest Orbi setup, although I am quietly considering the Orbi LBR20 LTE to replace the LAX20 and RBR50 AP Router behind it, add RBS50s and daisy-link. We have Tado, Hue, MusicCast, LG, Somfy, Eve Thread, Apple HD TV (ordered with thread, end of this month) so some 40 plus modules. I thought I had done some decent research but never trust French stone internal walls 🧐

One thing that has kept me sane is the friendly and helpful support staff, helpful even after I applied my Armor subscription to the wrong Netgear account! Big thank you to the support staff and the community here 👏😎

Vern