How do I know if I bridged R7000 correctly?

[SnowyMZ]

I posted the following questions in the wrong forum yesterday:

"I have a Netgear Nighthawk X6 R8000 router that I would like to bridge with a Netgear R7000 to expand to and increase speed on my deck in the backyard. I want to use the X6 as the router and the R7000 as the bridge. I am confused on exactly how to do this.

The X6 is on one side of the house and the R7000 will be on the other side, much closer to the deck outside. I will also attach a Roku 3 to the R7000 by ethernet.

So here are my questions:

Is this even doable?

Will bridging with the R7000 increase speed out in my backyard? I have Comcast Extreme 105 service and in most of the house I get around 128Mbps down and 25Mbps up, but out on the deck I get around 55 down and 12 up. I know this is at least partially the fault of the Intel 7260AC wireless card in my laptop, because with my son's Mac it gets closer to 100Mbps down out on the deck.

How do I go about bridging the R7000? Do I unplug the X6 and connect the R7000 to the modem and set it up as a bridge as per Netgear's instructions and then unplug the R7000 and reconnect the X6? Then do I just plug in the R7000 where I want to put it and the X6 will see it? Netgear has instructions on how to bridge, but it doesn't say how to actually connect the router that is acting as the bridge to configure it.

I would appreciate any help on how to go about this.

One last thing. If it is better to bridge 2 R7000's I can return the X6, but I really like the performance I'm getting in most of the house so I would prefer to keep it."

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So,yesterday I did attempt to bridge the R7000 but I have no idea if I did it correctly. When I log into the X6 web page I do see the R7000 listed under devices. But when I connect the Roku 3 to one of the LAN ports on the R7000 it is amber, not white. Also out on the deck a few speed tests were erratic with a couple actually showing reduced speed.

How would I know if I bridged the R7000 correctly?

 

[bobsilver]

Well first off if you are getting network and internet from the bridged R7000 you did it right. So congrats.

As to your question on the R8000 if you want the added 5ghz bandwidth then keep it. The primary advantage is that the R8000 has 2 5ghz radios. They can be used independently or in tandem. The purpose is to double the 5ghz space for your network. In the Smart Connect setup the router moves the slower devices to the lower frequency band and the faster to the higher. All the benefits of the faster wifi are in the 5ghz band. So logic is that with more devices that use it it will create congestion and slow things down. The dual radios alleviate that.

I use an R8000 as well as a R7000. I use them both in AP mode as where I need to place a router is in a bad place for RF so I use a another device as my router. The R8000 is placed where we spend much of our time. I do not use the Smart Connect so I have manually assigned various devices to the appropriate band. The R7000 sits at the extremity of my house. The 2 together give me great coverage and never have an issue. I have over 50 devices on my network which half are wireless.

Regarding the Roku it is a 100mbs wired connection not a Gigabit. Thats why it is amber and not white in color. Thats the usual color indication on Netgear router lan ports.

Bob Silver
Netgear