R7000 vs EX7000 as AP

[burnsy180]

I have fibre coming into the garage into a provider-sourced gateway/modem. I have a wifi modem/router (Netgear D6000) connected to the modem at the front of the house. I want to buy a second wifi router to connect LAN to LAN to the main router and sit down the other end of the house and act as an access point.
I will have wired and wireless devices connected to this AP.

My two ideas are this:
Netgear R7000 configured as AP.

Netgear EX7000 configured as AP.

I've read various things about these both and just wanted to know if anyone can clear some questions up for me.

Both have USB ports for drive sharing, can the R7000 utilise this when in AP mode? I've read that the EX7000 can.

When the EX7000 is set up as an access point (ie. hard-wired to main router), can I still connect other ethernet devices to the EX7000?

Has anyone verified the EX7000 in this setup?

UPDATE: Spoke to NETGEAR online chat and she tells me you definitely can use the R7000 USB port for sharing in AP mode. She also said that you can use wired devices connected to the EX7000 when it is hard-wired as an AP, even though the online user manual says otherwise. Anyone?

 

[bill001g]

My guess would be that you can. To a point it depends on the software but they would have to actually design it to not work. If you were to not use the software feature to make it a AP but instead cabled to the lan port and disable any dhcp I know it will work. What is inside the box is a small switch chip that runs the lan ports, then there is a the processor chip that connect to this chip as well as the wan port and the radio chips.

It is almost impossible to prevent traffic from going between the lan ports because it never leaves the switch chip. The only question would be did they do something stupid to prevent traffic going from lan-wan. The way almost every device I have seen does this is to in effect make it appear the wan port is on the switch...even though technically it must pass though the cpu chip.

 

[burnsy180]

My guess would be that you can. To a point it depends on the software but they would have to actually design it to not work. If you were to not use the software feature to make it a AP but instead cabled to the lan port and disable any dhcp I know it will work. What is inside the box is a small switch chip that runs the lan ports, then there is a the processor chip that connect to this chip as well as the wan port and the radio chips.

It is almost impossible to prevent traffic from going between the lan ports because it never leaves the switch chip. The only question would be did they do something stupid to prevent traffic going from lan-wan. The way almost every device I have seen does this is to in effect make it appear the wan port is on the switch...even though technically it must pass though the cpu chip.

So I ended up buying an R7000 and have it set up as an access point. The USB works perfectly and wireless range is excellent.

As for the EX7000 in AP mode connecting wired devices, I guess it's just a try-it-and-see situation. Thanks for your insight bill001g

 

[claudioita]

I When the EX7000 is set up as an access point (ie. hard-wired to main router), can I still connect other ethernet devices to the EX7000?

Has anyone verified the EX7000 in this setup?

UPDATE: Spoke to NETGEAR online chat and she tells me you definitely can use the R7000 USB port for sharing in AP mode. She also said that you can use wired devices connected to the EX7000 when it is hard-wired as an AP, even though the online user manual says otherwise. Anyone?

the part in bold made me think a lot. I have exactly the same issue and was wondering if the ex7000 ethernet oort will work if in access point (why shouldn't, very strange when I red that in the manual)