Looking for seamless roaming solution with my R7000

[tsupanich]

Hello,

I'm using Netgear R7000 as a main router. Now I'm looking for Access Point to extend WiFi coverage to the 2nd floor of my home with wired connection prepared. I want to romaing the WiFi connection seamlessly when moving between floors. So is there any solutions for this? 

Not sure whether any of these Nighthawk families would be the answer?

- Another R7000 as an access point 

- EX7000 

- R7000P

- R7800

(all with wired connection to existing R7000)

Thanks in advance.

[Whoaru99]

I use a R6700 this way. Way I did is connect lan port from R7000 to lan port of R6700.

I have R7000 IP xxx.xxx.xxx.1, serving DHCP xxx.xxx.xxx.100-254. Turn off DHCP in R6700 (2nd one, whatever you use). Set IP of 2nd one xxx.xxx.xxx.2. Where xxx.xxx.xxx same as primary router. Set gateway IP of 2nd one to IP of primary.

Make encryption settings same, same ssid, same password. But, set different wi-fi channel for 2nd one.

Should do it, if I recall properly.

[tsupanich]

Thanks mate for your information. So how can you check and know that the connection is managing by the 2nd one when you moved around,  not still connecting to the 1st one?

[Whoaru99]

There isn't really any guarantee, with this type of gear anyway, any given device will switch over when you might expect. It depends mostly on the wifi roaming agressiveness of the client, when it has a choice. Some might hang onto the weaker signal longer, some might jump ship sooner.

Since ssid is the same, at a high level if you could see the channel the device is using that might be about the only way to know for sure.

I've never bothered to look into if/when/where my stuff switches as long as it seem to be working satisfactorily...and it has so far.

If you wanted to drop a bundle on enterprise-grade solutions then I think there is more that can be done to monitor and more directly handle device roaming.

[StephenB]

Although I haven't seen a definitive response, it appears that the mesh extenders (EX7000, EX8000) are supposed to support 802.11k in AP mode.  If so, they would encourage roaming more than a router in AP mode would. 

You could also just buy a business AP, for instance the WAC505.