I have a home network, which also includes my on-site business in a separate building. I just moved to this house and found that while my netgear EA4500 worked just good enough to broadcast from my house to my shop at our last house, it won't reach from the house to the shop here. Thinking a newer, better router might have better range, I went out today and bought the Netgear Nighthawk X6 R7900. Installed new router this afternoon and still don't have strong enough signal in my shop to get better than 0.9mbps down and much less up. I thought about using a range extender, but my dilemma is that I have a network printer at work that I need to be able to print to from the house and a NAS in the house I need to access from my shop. I may be wrong, but in the past I came to find I need to be on the same SSID for all of these to work, and a range extender would extend my network with a different SSID, making communication between all devices impossible. I have found a netgear article that explains setting up an extender using the same SSID, but it also says there may be issues with that confifuration. I should also say that I have no preference for netgear products. I use them because I tend to shop at Costco and that's what they usually carry.
So, now I have my two routers and am wondering if I can bridge my network from the R7900 in my house to the EA4500 in my shop. It's about 80 feet away, but I have an empty conduit underground already and can pull a cat5 or cat6 cable very easily. My question is, can I set up my routers, either with stock firmware or ddwrt to send my same SSID to a wired bridge router from my house to my shop? And if I do so, will I have problems using the same SSID? Finally, will my portable devices like phones and tablets be able to switch automatically between whichever router is sending the strongest signal and have a seamless hand off between the two routers when moving between them? If not, I see there is also a range extender that's also a nighthawk product, the AC1900. I would consider buying one of these if it would do what I want. Again, netgear has an article that says you can use their extenders with the same SSID, but I have read all over the place that there can be issues with that kind of setup. In fact, I tried it once before when I bought my my ea4500 and setting up ddwrt on my previous router, but I remember getting stuck at some point and giving up. I am more determined and more desperate now, though, as it's causing a delay in getting my business up and running at my new house.
I know that the new mesh devices would do exactly what I want, but I have a problem justifying a higher cost for devices which have proprietary communication abilities and I can't just go out and get whatever new satellite comes out, netgear or not and add it into my network later. At least with standard routers or extenders, if one device breaks, I can replace it with newer technology later and upgrade the other pieces as necessary. I don't want to spend $500 now and know I will need to spend $500+ if I need to change the whole setup with something upgraded later and have that much expensive, obsolete technology sitting in a junk drawer. Mesh technology seems like it would save a lot of time with setup and save me from having to use my empty conduit I buried for running extra power lines later. So I am very open to this if it is going to be a lot easier in the long run. I really need to solve this network issue quickly, so I need a sure fire solution here before I start investing a lot of time for trial and error solutions.
Because I need to communicate with my NAS, I am considering running a cat cable to that anyway and using that at my desk for my computer, but I still need WiFi access for phones and tablets for my work.
I am tech savvy, but quite a noob with networking, so any replies, tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.
So, now I have my two routers and am wondering if I can bridge my network from the R7900 in my house to the EA4500 in my shop. It's about 80 feet away, but I have an empty conduit underground already and can pull a cat5 or cat6 cable very easily. My question is, can I set up my routers, either with stock firmware or ddwrt to send my same SSID to a wired bridge router from my house to my shop? And if I do so, will I have problems using the same SSID? Finally, will my portable devices like phones and tablets be able to switch automatically between whichever router is sending the strongest signal and have a seamless hand off between the two routers when moving between them? If not, I see there is also a range extender that's also a nighthawk product, the AC1900. I would consider buying one of these if it would do what I want. Again, netgear has an article that says you can use their extenders with the same SSID, but I have read all over the place that there can be issues with that kind of setup. In fact, I tried it once before when I bought my my ea4500 and setting up ddwrt on my previous router, but I remember getting stuck at some point and giving up. I am more determined and more desperate now, though, as it's causing a delay in getting my business up and running at my new house.
I know that the new mesh devices would do exactly what I want, but I have a problem justifying a higher cost for devices which have proprietary communication abilities and I can't just go out and get whatever new satellite comes out, netgear or not and add it into my network later. At least with standard routers or extenders, if one device breaks, I can replace it with newer technology later and upgrade the other pieces as necessary. I don't want to spend $500 now and know I will need to spend $500+ if I need to change the whole setup with something upgraded later and have that much expensive, obsolete technology sitting in a junk drawer. Mesh technology seems like it would save a lot of time with setup and save me from having to use my empty conduit I buried for running extra power lines later. So I am very open to this if it is going to be a lot easier in the long run. I really need to solve this network issue quickly, so I need a sure fire solution here before I start investing a lot of time for trial and error solutions.
Because I need to communicate with my NAS, I am considering running a cat cable to that anyway and using that at my desk for my computer, but I still need WiFi access for phones and tablets for my work.
I am tech savvy, but quite a noob with networking, so any replies, tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.
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