Extending Wifi from a Netgear Nighthawk R7000

StormHD

Hi - I've got a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router and a dead spot in the far side of the house.

I've seen that there are also Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 range extenders out there, but they're not cheap and I wanted to ensure they'd meet my needs before I moved forward.

I've got two main questions:

1) Is that range extender actually a repeater, and as such will it slow my wifi network down to half speed?  This is something 'mesh' solutions don't have a problem with I believe.

2) Does the extender appear as an additional Wifi AP with it's own SSID?  If so - will I still be able to control my smart home devices if they're connected to the Router and my phone is connected to the extender?  I'm sure the answer is probably yes as they'll be on a single network, but I want to be sure.  We've lots of stuff like Hue, Ring, Smartthings etc, and whatever I got for needs to work with it.

Thanks,

emptage

A shame you didn't get a response to this as I have a similar problem and also have a Nighthawk R7000.  How did you solve the problem ?

mickevh

Irrespective of the kit you use, the best way to extend Wi-Fi coverage is to create "cellular" network of multiple AP's. The "trick" is how you establish the "backhaul" links between AP's (and everything else.)

The best way to establish the backhauls is with "proper" cabled ethernet links. Thence, with careful radio channel planning you can get over the bandwidth clobberiing of repeaters and "mesh" systems that occurs when outpost AP's are tuned to the same radio channel as any other nearby AP's.

Next best is probably to tunnel the backhaul over the mains using powerline type technologies.

Least good is to establish the backhaul using Wi-Fi. But as speeds are getting faster, if that's good enough for you use case, it can be fine - especially with things like "tri-band" (which has backhaul and client access on different radio frequencies.) However, the fundamental of Wi-Fi are the same as ever - Wi-Fi is an only-one-thing-at-a-time-can-transmit techology, whether that would be transmitter is a client, AP, repeater, "mesh" link or anything else. By removing backhaul links from the Wi-FI airwaves (e.g. using ethernet or powerline) you increase the the air time available to the remaining devices.

SSID names is a matter of preference. If you name them all the same, then client may (just "may") automatically "roam" between AP's, if the SSID's differ, client will never roam until they completely loose connection but you will know for sure which AP you are talking to. There's no "right" or "wrong" way to do this, it's a matter of preference.

In enterprise systems it is possible to bind different SSID's to different VLAN's (virtual LAN's) and whilst some of the pro-sumer grade gear may offer this, the vast majority if "basic" SOHO kit does not (with the exception of the "guest" SSID some routers offer) so even if you set up differing SSID names, it's most likely they are all connected to the same common network, the upshot being that different SSID's hasn't effected separation of one group of clients from another.