I have been using an R8000 router for the past year and recently got my hands on the XR500. I have a 2 storey house with my ISP modem set to bridge mode and the netgear router on the main floor. Since I now have 2 really good routers, I was thinking I should put the XR500 on the main floor and the R8000 on the 2nd floor LAN connected. I guess I would put the R8000 into AP mode since the XR 500 has the good firmware. My question is if this makes sense, or should I just use the XR500 and sell the R8000? I'm wondering how the tri-band on the R8000 would work alongside the dual band on the XR500. Does it just do 2 bands in this case? I would typically try it myself but am away for work so checking to see if anyone has done this.
Deploying a wired AP can be a very good idea if you need improve WiFi coverage. I'm not sure if the R8000 has the following problem, but the throughout of the WAN port can drop by as much as half in AP mode. You can avoid this by leaving the WAN port disconnected and using a LAN port. You will also need to disable the DHCP server.
As to frequency bands, just make sure to use different channels between the XR500 and R8000.
