Likely just a very stupid question, but for the life of me i cannot find the answer.
I have 3 devices (netgear r7800, Asus ax53U, Netgear ex6120)
I want to have everything wired, however, the Netgear extender (ex6120) is throwing a spanner in the works, as it only has 100mbit ethernet port (who thought this was a good idea?)
in any case, seems like i will need to use a wireless backhaul for that device.
The other two devices will be connected via a wired network (there is gigabit all over the house). What would the best way of connecting the EX6120 (wireleslly). As a Mesh, repeater or extender? if a mesh, should i setup all devices as mesh device, even though they have a wired backhaul?
I do not know the difference between a "repeater" and an "extender", but in this situation I would simply start with WDS. Then, measure the real bandwidth, and check that it is indeed faster than the 100Mbps wire.
Can an extender not use a different bandwidth for backhaul. I.e. 5ghz to extend 2.8ghz
As for the difference. Repeater just takes the signal and repeats it. An extender takes the network traffic from some other source and puts it in the air.
In anycase, the wireless is definitely qucker than 100mbit. No need for testing that (already did some tests there.
My main question. Would nesh even work with only 1 wireless node and 2 wired node? And is the performance better in comparison to repeater or extender (taking into account any overhead in maintenance.
In the future i will likely add an ap in the garden. My wish would be for that tk be wired... but thats still unsure.
The word "mesh" as used by the marketing departments of some manufacturers is definitely a ploy to sell more.
The IEEE 802.11s mesh standard is something very different.
Ok. Let me stay out of terminology. My question basically boils down to.
How do i set up the netgear ex6120, given the fact it needs to be connected wirelessly. Will it be a 802.11s mesh node or do i use a different method to connect it. Also, if im gou g ahead eith 802.11s, do all devices need to be s3tup as 802.11s nodes or not?
The Netgear has its original firmware? Then it should be trivial to put it in repeater mode (it is, specifically, designed for that mode) and just associate with whatever AP you choose.
It should know it is not a DHCP server and act as a 'Dumb AP'.
I don't think you need to configure the AP it is client to.
That is the problem with repeaters. Not only are they placed away from their AP (which diminishes signal strength) the duplex signal halves it again. And gawd forbid some client on its AP is pulling bandwidth too.
They might call it something else. It is designed to be a repeater first. This is why I call it a marketing ploy: They all use proprietary backhaul (some even have another frequency for backhaul). And they get along in a proprietary way.
If you are lucky it is either enabled by default or called something else; like 802.11r.
Again: they sell these things to make it difficult to work with anything other than that family of repeaters/mesh. I'm sure another Netgear ex6120 would have no problem with both having the same SSID.
I wish I could give you an easy answer but without having the thing in my hand I believe you already have the best throughput you are going to get.
Thanks for the help. I now start the realize this device is next to useless... I'm just going to connect it via wire and use it for some low bandwidth devices. Cannot get any decent performance out of this device.
Strange: there is no hardware page for Netgear ex6120