I just purchased the X6S EX8000 mesh router. I currently have the R7500 which is a dual band router. After research my understranding is that fastlane3 has a dedicated radio on the 5Ghz network for communication with the router, meaning it won't reduce bandwidth by communication with the router. However, since I have a dual band router is this still the case? Is there a downside to using the X6S mesh router with my existing router?
Model: EX8000|AC3000 Nighthawk X6S Tri Band WiFi Range Extender
fastlane3 has a dedicated radio on the 5Ghz network for communication with the router, meaning it won't reduce bandwidth by communication with the router. However, since I have a dual band router is this still the case?
The extender will use one 5Ghz radio to connect to the router, and extend the 5Ghz wifi using the other radio. Of course the Router's 5Ghz radio isn't dedicated, so it will be shared between the extender and the clients using the router directly.
This should result in better performance for the extender-connected clients, and the router performance won't be any worse than it was before (assuming all the clients were connecting at 5Ghz)
Thanks for your reply. I'm finding this technology really interesting to learn about.
Yes, we do have quite a few clients connecting at 2.4Ghz because they either don't support 5Ghz or I decided they didn't need to share the bandwidth (printer, alexa devices, etc.). Will this negatively impact the devices?
What you said makes sense regarding the router's 5Ghz which was also my original concern, but I'm still trying to understand how this wouldn't negatively affect the overall bandwith. If there are clients still connected to the router because they are closer to it then the extender then wouldn't they have half the bandwidth to utilize? Also wouldn't there be some sort of bottleneck since the extender has full bandwidth on its end to the device but the communication to the router is half?
Yes, we do have quite a few clients connecting at 2.4Ghz because they either don't support 5Ghz or I decided they didn't need to share the bandwidth (printer, alexa devices, etc.). Will this negatively impact the devices?
If there are clients still connected to the router because they are closer to it then the extender then wouldn't they have half the bandwidth to utilize? Also wouldn't there be some sort of bottleneck since the extender has full bandwidth on its end to the device but the communication to the router is half?
Let's start with the extender. A typical extender is using the same 5 ghz radio to connect to a client as it does to the router. That radio can only be used for one thing at a time.
When data is flowing over the internet to the client, it first is sent to the extender, and then is relayed by the extender to the the client. That takes twice as long as sending it to the client directly. The extender bandwidth is cut in half simply because it can't send anything while it is receiving.
The router bandwidth isn't adversely affected - it is only sending the data to the extender once, and it can send or receive from something else while the extender is relaying the data to the client. In fact, if the extender<->router connection is high quality, then the extender can actually improve the router's performance (because it can send something to the extender faster than it could send it to a distant client).
So sharing the router 5G radio between it's client traffic and the extender connection does no harm - it is never worse than having all the 5G clients directly connected to the router. It could still end up being the performance bottleneck if you have a really fast internet connection. If that is the case, you can get a triband router, and/or connect the extender to the router over ethernet. When the extender is connected to the router with ethernet, then there is no relay, and both 5 Ghz radios in the extender can connect to clients. And of course, the load on the router wifi is reduced.
So i've had the extender for some time now and are at the point where I can do a wired connection at the backbone. However, I'm reading from some places that you can only do AP mode. Is this true? If so it defeats the purpose of purchasing a mesh router if I have to have different access points.
First off the EX is NOT a router. It's a extender or AP.
So it can help extend the primary routers wireless in extender mode or add to it by setting up a wireless of it's own in AP Mode which would need to be LAN connected to the primary router in AP mode.
OK, I'm aware that its a mesh extender and not a router. Its simply a "mistype", which you can tell by the product referenced and also where I reference it as an extender elsewhere in the thread.
Yes, I'm aware of what the product can do. It does seem pretty ridiculous to not have the ability to enable the mesh mode while connecting through ethernet for the backbone, though. Why is only AP mode enabled? I don't want to use a different SSID, which is why I purchased this product. I can do this with much cheaper mesh products. Why not this?
