Setting up Dual R7000's

[Beemer3]

I'm in the process of purchasing a second r7000's and desperately need some assistance. I have Century Link DSL (40mbs down; 5mbs up) with a Zyxel C1000Z modem & wireless router. I have roughly 12 or so wireless devices (5 phones, 3 ipads, roku, apple tv etc... I love my r7000 and want to expand my network and range so I'm going to get another one but I'm a noob with networking and need some advice in how to set this up.

I currently just my r7000 hooked up to one of the LAN ports on my C1000Z and haven't changed any settings. I am thinking I need to disable the wireless settings on the C1000Z or even disable the modem function and allow the r7000 to do all the work so to speak. I guess the 2nd r7000 would be set up as bridged?....not sure. I need your expertise so if someone could please let me know what my best setup options are, I would really appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

 

[bobsilver]

The R7000 can be used as an Access Point which means that you will be using the wireless functions of the router but not the routing functions. If you will have 2 R7000 then ideally you would want to use 1 as a router and the other as an AP (access point). But it appears that you currently have a combined modem, router and wireless device. What you want to do is set up you Zyxel C1000Z as a modem only. If you go into the settings of the Zyxel you should see menu options that allow you to shut off the wireless functions as well as the DHCP server. You want to be mindful of the ip address that the Zyxel has because if you wish to use a R7000 as a router it needs to be very different then what the R7000 see as its DHCP range. I mean the Zyxel should be something like 10.x.x.x and the R7000 192.x.x.x. It doesn't matter what they are just so they are in a different range.

Then plug the lan port of the Zyxel into the wan (yellow) port of the R7000 and use the wizard in the R7000 to set it up. You should be ok.

To use the second R7000 place it at a far end of your house and go to advance settings and look for AP Mode. Turn it on. Follow the message instructions. The second R7000 in AP mode needs to be connected to one of the lan ports on both so you will need a cat5 cable running between them. If you don't have cable then look at powerline extenders to give you that connection.

What you want is easy to do. The complicated part is configuring the Zyxel to shut everything down you don't want it to do. Another option would be to get a modem form your ISP. Which is straight forward at that point. Becomes plug and play.

Bob Silver
Netgear Networking Consultant

 

[thiggins]

If you are ok with the routing functions on the ZyXEL, just leave it alone.

Set both the R7000's to AP mode and connect them via Ethernet to the ZyXEL.

Set each router to a different channel (1, 6, 11 in 2.4 GHz). You can use the same or different SSIDs. I recommend at least different SSID's for each band.

See this article for other information on setting up a multi-AP installation
The Best Way To Get Whole House Wireless Coverage

 

[messerchmidt]

flash both to ddwrt, will work better

 

[Beemer3]

Ok....Thanks everyone for their assistance. I finally purchased the other r7000 and have set up the second as an AP. The way I have this currently configured is my original Zyxel C1000Z is my modem but I still have the router active and it is being used with no issues at the moment. However, I did disable the wireless router function. The primary R7000 is connected to the Zyxel via cat cable and I also did not disable the router function but I currently do not have anything other than the secondary or AP R7000 connected to a data port.

With this in mind, the SSID's and passwords are identical on both R7000's as suggested but I have a question as to the CHANNEL settings. The default setting for the 2G CHANNEL's on BOTH R7000's as set to "AUTO" which was the default setting. However, the 5G channel settings both defaulted to "153" as there is no "auto" option. Therefore, I did change ONE to channel to 157 and left the other at 153. There appears to be mixed recommendations on the channel setting so I want to verify whether or not this was the correct thing to do or should they both be on the same channel? Also, one of the suggestions was to disable the Zyxel's router function (DHCP). What are the downfalls of leaving this setting enabled on both the Zyxel and primary R7000? I suppose if I were to use the R7000 ports, there could be some issues with network communication of some sort...correct?

If anyone has any other suggestions on how I can improve my setup, please do not hesitate to comment.

Thank you all for your assistance.

Beemer

 

[coxhaus]

Running both the Zyxel and the R7000 as routers is something called double NAT. Most people don't want to deal with this as you are double stacking your firewalls. So if you play games and need to open ports you are going to have open ports on both firewalls. I would recommend you turn off one of the routers. Since you like the R7000 and it is newer I would turn off the Zyxel router features and change it to a modem as already recommended.