Hi. I want to ask Nighthawk X4S owners if they are able to set the 5Ghz band to AC-only instead of a/n mixed? My goal is too buy this router and set it to AC-only for 5Ghz band ,and N-only for 2.4 band. I'm looking to buy a new router and I am still deciding between the X4S and the Linksys 1900ACS (this Linksys can be set to AC-only on 5Ghz band). Not being able to set the 5Ghz to AC-only would be a deal killer for me.
I think he understands all of which you mentioned however in some instances its actually useful to have an "only" option, though for most it may be pretty trivial.
Netgear routers usually specifies on config. the upto xxxx speed. So you set it to max. and when you have only -ac devices are connected
it'll run at max speed which is -ac mode. Don't need to specify -ac mode only. I am using same router at home. That 's the way it works. If
you mix -n and -ac devices then it'll run at -n mode speed to accomodate -n mode deivce.
Just a slight correction. It runs at -n mode speed while communicating with a -n mode device and at -ac mode speed with an -ac device. The presence of the -n mode device does drag the overall network throughput down, but it's not as bad as it would be if the router were running at -n mode speed all of the time.
Sure, it would be best to only have -ac devices. You can get a separate AP for -b/g/n clients, or you could force them to use the 2.4 GHz band. But what do you hope to achieve? Your Internet service is likely going to be the bottleneck, unless it's Gigabit speed.
