XR500 with EX7500 or EX8000 Extenders

[migsta]

Anybody know,

 

I tried the EX7500 X4s with the XR500.  I have no choice bu to keep the XR500 in the basement and then use 2 extenders for the main and top floor.  The X4s connection on the main floor to the XR500 was intermittent at best with the extender losing connection to the router frequently.  On the second floor it was mostly not connecting.  I used an X6s which could mostly keep the connection intact on the main floor with the extender but not really on the top floor.  I believe these are star topology and you can't daisy chain?

 

Does anybody know if the EX8000 will fair better and can it daisy chain as I need two.

 

I'm using Orbi now with the XR500 but I hate cutting the XR500's WiFi to let Orbi do the WiFi in AP as I then have to manage two GUI's and it does not seem ideal.

[Netduma Fraser]

I'm actually going to be getting an EX8000 at the end of this week for testing with the XR500 so I can let you know next week what I think. Though I won't have the space to do a test like in your scenario.

[HappyLittleChap]

I had an EX8000 set up with my XR500 as I wanted to create a dedicate wireless bridge directly from my games consoles to my XR500. I tried this in bridge 'extender' mode and Access Point mode. Both worked quite well and I had no issues with the XR500 other than some spectrum contention and EX8000 placement, can't be too close to the XR500. Local latency was measured at 2ms with 0.5ms jitter once I found an uncontested channel (I recommend using Wi-Fi Explorer), DFS100 was best for me. However, for whatever reason I was still getting poor hit registration on online in games like Battlefield and Splatoon2. I have since hardwired my consoles and never looked back. The EX8000 is now gathering dust, if anyone wants a bargain let me know. 

[migsta]

Would you say then that 1 unit was enough coverage.  I have 3 stories with the router in the basement - no choice.  Do these daisy chain or just star topology?  I had bad experience with the EX7500 extender which just could not maintain a router connection with the XR500 on the main floor - worse on the 2nd floor with the second extender.  The X6S router did better at maintaining the router connection to the EX7500's but still intermittent.  I didn't play with the channel settings though and I had smart connect enabled.  Using Orbi now for the WiFi with the XR500 wifi radio disabled but would prefer to extend the WiFi of the XR500 using extenders.  Thanks.

[HappyLittleChap]

My XR500 is on the ground floor of a three story terraced house, 120 years old with some thick walls. Even so, I did experience generally good WiFi connectivity for general web browsing across the house. 

 

I only tested one EX extender but the Netgear documentation suggest they could be daisy chained in bridge 'extender' mode but clearly each hop will add additional latency.

 

Deploying in AP mode would be result in a star configuration but you'd need to run LAN cables to each EX and if you could do then I be cabling PC/Consoles directly if that was the case. 

 

Whilst 5Ghz offers less interfernecne it's not so good penetrating thick walls. 2.4Ghz can be better in older houses but is much more prone to interfere from neighbouring Wi-Fi networks and other devices which operate on the same frequency bands within the home (e.g. cordless phones, microwaves, bluetooth, etc).

 

Good to specify the frequency/channel manually in my opinion, when I left the XR500 Smart set-up it put me on 2.4Ghz network with 6 competing networks in my neighbourhood with spectrum conflicts. I have manually configured an uncontested 5Ghz band (DFS 100) which was the goldilocks zone for me. 

 

 

 

 

 

Would you say then that 1 unit was enough coverage.  I have 3 stories with the router in the basement - no choice.  Do these daisy chain or just star topology?  I had bad experience with the EX7500 extender which just could not maintain a router connection with the XR500 on the main floor - worse on the 2nd floor with the second extender.  The X6S router did better at maintaining the router connection to the EX7500's but still intermittent.  I didn't play with the channel settings though and I had smart connect enabled.  Using Orbi now for the WiFi with the XR500 wifi radio disabled but would prefer to extend the WiFi of the XR500 using extenders.  Thanks.