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Wireless Setup for 3-Story House Currently Have R7000 Need Advice...

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y2jdmbfan

Regular Contributor
Guys,

In my old 1700 sq ft townhouse (3-Story) I had a Netgear R7000 hooked to the cable modem in the master bedroom closet. It worked best up there and was able to get a strong signal on the bottom floor.

I just moved into a 4,000 sq ft 3-Story home and am trying to optimize the network. There is Cat-5 run to 9 of the rooms in the house including the basement, office, kitchen, living room, and bedrooms. I installed a gigabit switch into the basement when I moved in and terminated the connections down there. I temporarily had the cable modem and R7000 in my office. This is in a front corner of the home on the main (2nd) floor and the wires were a mess. I decided to move the cable modem and router to the basement and use the R7000 as a router only and turn off the wireless radios / access point as the unit is mounted to a wood plank on the walls and there are metal beams right above where it is mounted.

I picked up an Asus RT-AC87R to use in Access Point only mode yesterday and I am not that happy with the coverage / performance. I temporarily have it in the office and I can't get full 125Mbps down on the upstairs 3rd floor. Should I return the RT-AC87R and get another R7000 for the access point as well?

I know the R7000 was great WAN-LAN and LAN-WAN performance which is why I thought it would be a good choice for the router portion.

Any input is appreciated, as of now, I think I may return the AC87R and get something else because it seems to be buggy and I have had to restart it a bunch of times to regain performance. It was around $250 and I'm not sure it is worth it over another R7000 or AC68U.
 
Does your ISP device support gateway mode?, or is it truly a modem? If it does, I would use it as the router / dhcp server with radios off, would purchase another 7000 and use both 7000's as AP's. If your ISP device is truly a modem you could purchase a lower end home router that has gig ports and use it for router / dhcp server..

EDIT: In order to get gig between your AP's and your routers gig ports, your home cabling will have to be at least CAT5E
 
Wiring is Cat-5E so we are good there. I'd prefer to not let the Arris/Comcast modem that I purchased do the routing. It's a pretty basic interface, and I am sure the routing isn't as good as the R7000. The Comcast modem is set to Bridge mode currently to act as a modem and voice connection only.
 
Wiring is Cat-5E so we are good there. I'd prefer to not let the Arris/Comcast modem that I purchased do the routing. It's a pretty basic interface, and I am sure the routing isn't as good as the R7000. The Comcast modem is set to Bridge mode currently to act as a modem and voice connection only.

if you are just looking for a device to do dhcp, then I wouldn't see why not. Unless you have other routing requirements.

EDIT: I see amazon dot com has some used / refurbed NG R6300's (gig ports) between 64 and $75. Could be used as a dhcp server / router between your modem and your home network. Could be configed with radios off, as another option..
 
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An update....I picked up an LRT214 after work and installed it when I got home. I was impressed with the device when unpacking it, but once I hooked it up to the network, that kinda changed. I couldn't get my full 125/25 speeds going through the LRT214. The speeds would fluctuate greatly. I updated the firmware and did a factory reset with no change. I ended up putting the RT-AC87R I had previously picked up for use as the access point in place as the router and I was back to my full speeds. I do like the firmware on the RT-AC87R, seems much more full featured than the R7000 firmware, at least it gives more detailed information and settings. However, the RT-AC87R is a bit expensive to use as a router only. The R7000 works great in the kitchen atop of the corner cabinets. I can get full 125/25 on the 5GHz band pretty much in all corners of the house and the basement, much better than the wireless performance of the RT-AC87R.
 
An update....I picked up an LRT214 after work and installed it when I got home. I was impressed with the device when unpacking it, but once I hooked it up to the network, that kinda changed. I couldn't get my full 125/25 speeds going through the LRT214. The speeds would fluctuate greatly. I updated the firmware and did a factory reset with no change. I ended up putting the RT-AC87R I had previously picked up for use as the access point in place as the router and I was back to my full speeds. I do like the firmware on the RT-AC87R, seems much more full featured than the R7000 firmware, at least it gives more detailed information and settings. However, the RT-AC87R is a bit expensive to use as a router only. The R7000 works great in the kitchen atop of the corner cabinets. I can get full 125/25 on the 5GHz band pretty much in all corners of the house and the basement, much better than the wireless performance of the RT-AC87R.

Return it while you still can? And buy yourself another R7000. I don't know prices so you may need to pay on top
 
I can return the RT-AC87R and the Linksys LRT214 with no issue, have 14 days minimum, no re-stocking fee.
 

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