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Rt ac5300 with netgear wifi extender

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pgrecs

New Around Here
hello everyone! very inexperienced newbie here

so i have an rt 5300 with the latest Merlin firmware update, recently i just upgraded to 1gbs speed in my household due to lots of clients (about 30) and internet speed getting slow. after that upgrade, i noticed the speeds around the house has stayed the same, wifi reception has gotten worse as well so i decided to finally setup a "mesh system" So I purchased some wifi extenders. I purchased 2 netgear ex7700 (x6 triband) and connected them via cat6 ethernet, set them up in ap mode and placed them in those areas with poor wifi reception(front of the house and in the backyard for the pool area). Now the wifi connection is great but i am still getting slow speeds they range between 40-300 mbps according to the speed test on different clients and different spots in my house. my modem to the rt5300 is also connected via cat6 cable as well.

I've tried doing a full factory reset with the 15 min waits and reboots and that entire list of things I've found on the forum. i have smart connect disabled on the rt 5300, but enabled on both ex7700, running one ssid for every band, wps disabled, my modem is in bridge mode. is there something i can try to fix this? Or is there some setting i have to change to make this work better?

i don't even know if those netgear wifi extenders work well with the router i currently have. should i just scrap everything and upgrade to the netgear orbi 6? i hear its a simple setup and works very well but its a bit expensive or is there a way to make this setup work well with the fast internet speed I'm paying for. any advice would help
 
Have you tried plugging a PC into one of the Asus' LAN sockets and confirming you're getting full speed over Ethernet?
 
i just upgraded to 1gbs speed in my household due to lots of clients (about 30)

Up to 1Gbps may be the speed "to you house", but not "in your house" yet. About 30 clients are not that many. Your family members don't use their phones, tablets, laptops, game consoles and a TVs all in the same time. You perhaps have 30 connected devices, but not 30 active clients. Common mobile clients use 2-stream radio - in ideal Wi-Fi environment conditions you may see about 500Mbps throughput, or 1/2 of your ISP line. Someone gave you a wrong advice about those "tri-band" routers/extenders. You're only creating Wi-Fi pollution around your home and perhaps suffer from your own interference levels. 3x tri-band devices means total of 9x Wi-Fi radios in your home.
 
Up to 1Gbps may be the speed "to you house", but not "in your house" yet. About 30 clients are not that many. Your family members don't use their phones, tablets, laptops, game consoles and a TVs all in the same time. You perhaps have 30 connected devices, but not 30 active clients. Common mobile clients use 2-stream radio - in ideal Wi-Fi environment conditions you may see about 500Mbps throughput, or 1/2 of your ISP line. Someone gave you a wrong advice about those "tri-band" routers/extenders. You're only creating Wi-Fi pollution around your home and perhaps suffer from your own interference levels. 3x tri-band devices means total of 9x Wi-Fi radios in your home.
So basically the set up I have is bad and should just get rid of everything and start fresh?
 
So basically the set up I have is bad and should just get rid of everything and start fresh?

I don't know any details about your home (country, coverage area, floors, building materials, etc.), but I would try to separate devices on 2 bands only with carefully selected and fixed Wi-Fi channels, no Auto channels. All slow devices like lights, door bells, washers, etc. stay on 2.4GHz. All fast devices connect to 5GHz only, no SmartConnect. I would use APs/extenders only in places they are needed, with the same SSID as main router, but on different Wi-Fi channels to minimize the interference. This is not a "mesh system", but it will work for you, perhaps with the equipment you already have. You need to know what are you doing though. Plugging in more Wi-Fi doesn't guarantee you better results.
 
I don't know what configuration options EX7700 extenders have, but I mean the following in an example:

Code:
ISP -->  RT-AC5300 Main Router --> EX7700 AP --> ??

        /        \                /        \
   
    SSID_24      SSID_50       SSID_24     SSID_50
    Ch.1         Ch.36         Ch.11       Ch.149

What @ColinTaylor asked you twice is very important. Please, answer this question first before making plans.
 
I don't know what configuration options EX7700 extenders have, but I mean the following in an example:

Code:
ISP -->  RT-AC5300 Main Router --> EX7700 AP --> ??

        /        \                /        \
  
    SSID_24      SSID_50       SSID_24     SSID_50
    Ch.1         Ch.36         Ch.11       Ch.149

What @ColinTaylor asked you twice is very important. Please, answer this question first before making plans.
Ok I will check tonight when I get back from work and get back to you guys!
 
I don't know what configuration options EX7700 extenders have, but I mean the following in an example:

Code:
ISP -->  RT-AC5300 Main Router --> EX7700 AP --> ??

        /        \                /        \
  
    SSID_24      SSID_50       SSID_24     SSID_50
    Ch.1         Ch.36         Ch.11       Ch.149

What @ColinTaylor asked you twice is very important. Please, answer this question first before making plans.
ok so i did multiple tests and im jst confused at this point.

modem to computer using cat 6 cable 430mbps with 31-32 upload

with a random cable i found which is a cat5 cable but from my router to my computer i was getting 92mbps with 30-32 upload

with a cat5e cable from router to my computer im getting 480 mbps nd 29-30 upload

with a cat6 cable from router to my computer but over like a rough estimated distance of 200ft i was getting 450mbps with 28-30upload, but odd thing is i was gettting 600 at some moments. im so lost. i feel like my wifi is getting worse everyday aswell.
 
modem to computer using cat 6 cable 430mbps with 31-32 upload

with a cat5e cable from router to my computer im getting 480 mbps nd 29-30 upload

with a cat6 cable from router to my computer but over like a rough estimated distance of 200ft i was getting 450mbps with 28-30upload, but odd thing is i was gettting 600 at some moments. im so lost. i feel like my wifi is getting worse everyday aswell.

Everything above points to an ISP problem. You said you upgraded to 1Gb. What are the advertised download and upload speeds? What download and upload speeds were you (supposed to be) getting before the upgrade.

Verify the speeds by using different speed test sites in case the one you're using is not returning accurate results.


with a random cable i found which is a cat5 cable but from my router to my computer i was getting 92mbps with 30-32 upload
It sounds like this cable is either damaged, wired incorrectly, or only has 2 wire pairs instead of 4. Throw it away.
 
Everything above points to an ISP problem. You said you upgraded to 1Gb. What are the advertised download and upload speeds? What download and upload speeds were you (supposed to be) getting before the upgrade.

Verify the speeds by using different speed test sites in case the one you're using is not returning accurate results.



It sounds like this cable is either damaged, wired incorrectly, or only has 2 wire pairs instead of 4. Throw it away.
i used 2 speed tests(speedtest.net and google) and did about 4 tests per connection, avged a little higher or lower but roughly the same. the advertised speed is 1gbps download and 30mbps upload. its weird cause when i first got it and set it up (which is when i did the full reset on my rt5300) i was getting 700-900.(if i remember correctly)

ok so i will ccall my isp and ask wtf is going on.

also tech9, your saying tri band is not needed and a waste i assume. so should i disable 1 5ghz band on each device to help with the wifi polllution? and set the channels as you suggested aswell(all different and no auto)? if this will help conneectivity issues and a little extra speed it will help. is it possible that my rt5300 is just going to shirts aswell? if so how can you tell?
 
I don't know anything about those extenders you got. I'm curious how they do their thing considering they're designed to use the same SSID unlike the default configurations for most other extenders.

Just wanted to note that I use an AC5300 as my main router, and I have 2 AC86U and 1 AX58U set up as AiMesh nodes (all devices running Merlin 384.19), and both performance and reliability are pretty satisfactory. (Also, I am using wireless backhaul for all devices; Ethernet backhaul wasn't an option.) My ISP is supposed to provide 1gbps down and 100mbps up, although even with a wired connection to the main router I don't think I've ever seen higher than 850mbps. I am working on a PC with an ethernet connection to an AiMesh node right now and I just got 508mbps down and 93.51mbps up. Performance would be better if I had wired backhaul like you do.

I really only needed 2 of the nodes for WiFi coverage, but I added the AX58U because one of my kids has several wired devices in his room, so it's mostly there as a "media bridge" but it's an AiMesh mode for seamless connectivity.
 

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