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RT-AC3100 owners question

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lilstone87

Very Senior Member
Hello everyone,

This is a question for owners of the AC3100, as I want to change setup at my house, and thinking about picking the AC3100 up. So here's what I want to do... Currently I have a netgear R8500 I wanted to put on second side of my house, and improve wireless on that side of the house. However Netgear doesn't offer a "Repeater" mode.. Which doesn't help my issue at all. So I was thinking of returning the R8500, and picking up the AC3100 to run in "Repeater" mode.

So the plan would be to have the AC3100 connect to my main router via 5GHz band, then have devices on the other side of house connect to the AC3100 mainly via 5GHz band, as most devices support it. So my question is.. What's the current state of the AC3100 wirelessly from owners of this router? As I don't want to waste time exchanging the R8500 for the AC3100, if it has any major issue with wireless currently. So I wanted to post this thread, and ask, because I haven't been on the forums here in a while to know, or not.
 
I would suggest to find other ways to extend the wireless instead.

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/sh...-go-with-the-rt-ac1900p-v3.34748/#post-281391


My first recommendation would be to see if a single router (even your existing one) could be located in the most central location possible relative to (most of) the devices you use wirelessly and if that helps.

Secondly, I would try a current, high end router like the 4x4:4 antennae/stream RT-AC3100 in that central location to see if it offers improvements over your existing equipment.

Thirdly, if that is also unsatisfactory (performance), then I would be hiring a professional to run a cable from the main router to the location where you want an AP to be (or, do it yourself if you can).

Fourthly, as a very last possibility is to use two additional routers. One cheaper one in Bridge mode and wired directly to it the WiFi router you want to use to connect these far devices to. What this option achieves over repeater mode is that the rest of the network is not crippled with 1/2 the speeds or less when any client on the repeater is being used. It is a little more expensive to setup, but once it is, it is more stable than any repeater network I've seen, used or replaced.

For that last option, the RT-N56U or the RT-AC56U (both can be found in the $50 range or less when 'on sale') would make a great 'bridge'. See if the 2.4GHz band or the 5GHz band offers the best connection stability, throughput and lowest latency for the bridge router. Then use the other band (or at least another non-overlapping channel) for the AP.

Others will suggest Moca. Or Power Line adaptors. But experience has proved that both of those options, along with 'repeater' mode, will give less than desired results (particularly if you also want/need fast and reliable LAN to LAN (and not just LAN to WAN) speeds).
 

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