So my Bro-in-law just moved into a new 3 story house. Comcast set up a modem/wireless router on the bottom floor. It doesn't reach the top floor. He went to target and the guy sold him the Nighthawk X6 and told him to use it as an extender. He called me up and wants to know how to do it. I have no idea how to do it without looking at it. I'm also not sure if he's be better off just turning off the wifi on the Comcast device and try using X6 as a whole house solution. The problem is the upper floor which is furthest from the router will need the most bandwidth.
When you set up wireless repeaters you generally lose bandwidth. Best idea is to turn DHCP off on the second router and give it a static address, wire it to the old one (home plugs?) and just use it as a wireless gateway. Give them both the same SSID+ password but put them on separate channels, the devices should pick up the one with the best signal and just connect getting an address from the one with DHCP on.
Definitely use the Nighthawk as the router. Set the Comcast modem to Bridge Mode. My x6 delivers nearly full bandwidth across 3 floors in 5gz. About half in 2.4ghz. http://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/internet/wireless-gateway-enable-disable-bridge-mode/
Ah very helpful. I'm guessing the Comcast router/modem must have "Internet" port to connect a new router. Can you do 3 different bands on that router like AC 5Ghz, N 5Ghz, N 2.4Ghz, or do you combine 2 N bands for the 600Mb throughput?
How about a powerline extender? Assuming the installation is connected on every floor, you should generally get better results than by wifi.
My X6 has fantastic range. I get a signal all the way down the street when I'm walking the dogs. Definitely use the X6. It should cover the whole house. Best, most trouble free router I've ever owned. Absolutely worth the high asking price, because unlike most consumer routers, it actually works.
I'm not sure. I actually left everything default since it worked better than I ever hoped. Maybe cmdrmonkey or khaid played with the features.
It has 3 AC bands, and automatically switches between them based on load. I think it has dual band N. I didn't do much configuration. Everything works great with default settings, unlike most other routers.
Well it turns out their house is wired with Ethernet to all the rooms so crisis averted for the moment.
looks like your bro in law is one of them blind buyers. bought a house without knowing it's hard wired with ethernet to all rooms and bought a high end $300 router to use as an extender. i want to sell him my old computer for $800. does he have regular cable internet? does the 2nd floor not have a coaxial cablet outlet? he can just move the modem/router combo on to a sweet spot on the 2nd floor if so.
His business PC doesn't have wireless and he wanted it in the basement so that's where they had Comcast put their modem. What ever junk they gave him couldn't connect to the Xbox two floors up. So now I think they have the X6 on the top floor hard wired through the house to the Comcast router down stairs. I'm not sure which one they are using for wifi. I'll make sure it's the X6 the next time I go over there. I didn't have time to chat but it sounded like Comcast made a return trip and set the X6 up for them. Again I don't really know what happened but the house was a model home and business office for over a year. The whole thing was wired for the use of the realty company and when they left they removed the central switch which was in the main office but now garage. I'm not really sure how they fixed it but it sounded like someone needed to move cables on a patch panel. Definitely over their heads. But it's the weirdest thing. They bought the home completely furnished. TVs, curtains, lamps, pictures, silverware, toys, and even an electric guitar was included. They pretty much sold everything and moved their cloths. On an unrelated note I'm going to be stuck in Beltsville next week. Anything interesting I need to do? Should I eat some crabs?
I need a way to restrict access by time and MAC address. I have a Netgear and it doesn't look like that's a feature in the OS. ASUS router's have it. Lyncsys might. Not sure about the others. Anyone know for sure of a good router that has that feature? I can try to put Tomato on my r6300v2 but I've heard both good and bad about that. Some say it works and some say it bricks.
Got my ASUS router up yesterday. I had zero problems with my Netgear but the ASUS software is so much better.
I felt the opposite. On my Asus DK, I thought the UI was great, but it was buggy. It would occasionally crash and end up in rescue mode which required a firmware upload. Really hard to do when your internet is now down. It wasn't a reliable router until I flashed Tomato. The Netgear UI isn't as great but runs like a champ.
I had the same experience. My Asus Dark Knight router had a nicer interface, but it wasn't stable unless I flashed it with Tomato, which strangely completely took down the 5ghz network. On the stock firmware or Merlin firmware, it would periodically drop the wifi and sometimes completely flake out to the point of needing a firmware reflash. My Netgear Nighthawk X6 is the exact opposite. It has a simple interface with few options, but it just works. I've had it about a year. I've never had to restart the router. I've never had an issue with the router. Not once has it ever dropped the wifi. I've never felt any temptation to tinker with it because it just worked perfectly right out of the box. Totally worth the $250.
I haven't had any problems with my last Netgear or the Asus before it and this AC68W is also supposed to be really reliable. The latest ASUS software has a lot of features that are useful for a family. I can create web filters for individual MAC address and access schedules for each MAC address. I've already set that up so all devices in the house except a few have no Internet access between 12 and 7 AM. I can set upload and download speed limits for each device and set device priority. For example I can give my PC priority 1 access while everything else gets 2-5. On the security side it uses TrendMico's IPS database. The router can block malicious sites and send email alerts if it detects Trojan activity on a device.
What do you think of this fanless ZOTAC ZBOX? I want to run SOPHOS security software on it and put it between my router and modem. I can add a 128GB SSD and maybe dig up some laptop DDR3 ram. The quad core Celeron should be fine.
I had the smaller Zotac P as a portable HTPC. The device itself was just fine. Some people complained about the heat but I wouldn't worry to much about it. For the price I wouldn't mind replacing it every 3 years or so. I stopped using it because the Atom wasn't good for HTPC and I picked up the HP Stream Mini for a similar price with more features.
I ended up going with a better version that has a Core M-5Y10c CPU. I wasn't familiar with the Intel's Core M processor line but they're what go into Macbooks and ultrabooks. It should perform better than a Haswell i3 which is a big step over the Atom/Celeron chip in the other one. It comes with 8GB of memory which I was going to have to buy anyway so, in the end, it was only about $40 more. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883218058