UPDATE: I've been using this for almost two weeks now with absolutely no issues. It continues to do exactly what it claims to be able to do. Awesome!
I have a Nighthawk X4S AC2600 Smart WiFi Router Model R7800 that I've had for awhile now and it's connected to AT&T's provided ARRIS BGW210-700 modem. My 2500 SqFt two story home was built back in 2007 with a sort of central box where all the wires come in and go from which happens to be located upstairs at the very front of the house in our walk in closet. This has not been the greatest place to have a wireless router, in fact it's been terrible!
Recently AT&T was finally able to send greater speeds through our fiber optic lines in our area so we went back to them and bumped our speed up to 300Mbps. Well almost immediately we were suffering with very low speeds down stairs, on the sides and the back of our home. We were consistently only getting speeds from 1 to 28Mbps...seriously. Everything was lagging or not connecting at all.
I'm fairly good when it comes to getting everything hooked up but I fall short when it comes to solving these problems. Several times I almost called out a service tech to try and troubleshoot it but I didn't want to spend the money to find out it was something simple. My research led to trying a whole house mesh type product but I didn't want to fork out the dough for a bunch of extenders all over the house just in case it wasn't needed.
Finally I came across this device here on amazon and it's was on sale and had great reviews. I liked that it's a Netgear product and should connect seamlessly to and truly become an extension of my existing router. I wouldn't even have to manually reconnect everything to it or change passwords, etc.
Well no lie, I took it out of the box, walked it upstairs and plugged it in to power next to my Nighthawk router. The quick start instructions were very simple explaining to hit the WPS button on the extender and then on the router...within minutes it connected to the 2.4Ghz signal. Then I repeated the same process to connect it to the 5Ghz signal which again only took a couple of minutes.
After that was done and all the lights were lit properly I walked it downstairs and plugged it in to a central location in the living room on a faux fireplace mantle. Within a couple of minutes all the lights came on and showed all was connected properly.
I then sat down and ran my usual test Googleing 'speed test' from my favorite chair in the living room where I have been consistently getting those awful slow speeds. WHAT?! See the attached image with the white background of the test results. I almost wanted to cry tears of joy! I am finally getting pretty darn close to the speeds that my router is getting from the modem (see black background speed test from the router)! And this is with having 25-35 devices being connected...outdoor and indoor security cameras, multiple iphones, ipads, a few video game consoles, 3 apple tv devices, a couple of smart tvs, 5 computers, a couple of Amazon Alexa devices, multiple guest devices and so on and so on.
Now I know this is my set up and my experience. A lot of people have different modems and routers from different manufacturer's even and I can't speak to how this will work with them, but I can honestly say this was worth every penny and the slow speed/terrible signal thing is a thing of the past! Woohoo!!
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
|---|---|
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
