Re: Extended WiFi by piggybacking my wired network AC1900 and R8000

Munkii · ‎2019-01-06

My house has a wired network that runs to all parts of house and works well. I much prefer wired enthernet but some devices just want to use WiFi.

One part of the house has poor WiFi access so I thought I could extended my network connectivity via this wired network to that part of the house. What I do not want to do is take an already poor WiFi signal from the router (R8000P) and extend it to that parrt of the house. So I assumed I could plug an Extender into my working wired network and then get a strong WiFi signal via the extender and the wired port.

I hope this makes sense because it did not seem to make sense to the Netgera supoort person I was speaking to.

My questions are

1. Is the combination of R8000P router and AC1900 range extender the right thing? Netgear Technical pre sales says it was

2. How can I check that the AC1900 is giving access to my netwowrk via the Ethernet poert it is plugged into rather than by extending the WQifi signal of the R8000?

Thanks

StephenB · ‎2019-01-08

@Munkii wrote:

So I assumed I could plug an Extender into my working wired network and then get a strong WiFi signal via the extender and the wired port.

I hope this makes sense because it did not seem to make sense to the Netgear supoort person I was speaking to.

It makes perfect sense, and you can do that. You want to set up the EX7000 in "AP mode". See page 18 of the manual: http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/EX7000/EX7000_UM_EN.pdf. You can match the network names to your R8000 if you wish (or not).

@Munkii wrote:

How can I check that the AC1900 is giving access to my netwowrk via the Ethernet poert it is plugged into rather than by extending the WQifi signal of the R8000?

The extender web ui should tell you that you are in AP mode. If you have any doubts, just turn off the R8000 wifi for a bit, and confirm that the EX7000 still connects you to the internet.

@Munkii wrote:

1. Is the combination of R8000P router and AC1900 range extender the right thing?

Sure, it's fine.

The EX8000 would give you more WiFi capacity in the new coverage area (AC3000 instead of AC1900). Whether that's useful or not depends on how many client devices will be simultanously using the AP's (extender's) WiFi.

Note that there are quite a few issues being reported with the most recent firmware for the EX7000 (1.0.1.78). Generally folks are getting better results if they stay witih the previous release (1.0.0.66). So if you go with the EX7000, you might want to check back here and see if the firmware issues are resolved. If they aren't, then just use 1.0.0.66 firmware for a while.

Munkii · ‎2019-02-02

Thanks Stephen. Sorry it has taken me so long to come back. The WiFi router reset to Factory default this morning when the electricity tripped. Seemed like a good time to try this all out.

Thanks again