Getting an eero pro 6E wifi mesh network, can I still use my Netgear Nighthawk Router?

[robgmun]

I live in a slim but tall 3-story house. At the moment I have my XR500 router on the ground floor. Very powerful for the ground floor and a pretty decent signal on the 1st. But on the top floor, the single is weak and continually drops. Getting 30Mbps max. I tried to use a powerline extender, but it was a disaster.

I decided to flood the house full of Eero Pro 6E nodes. 6 in total, 2 for each floor. This should be able to give us 1 Gigabit wifi on throughout the house (I'm on Seethelight's Gigafast 900Mbps)

But my question is, my XR500 is great as a modem and the hub in the back is useful. Can I just switch off the wifi on the XR500 and carry on using the XR500 as my main router? The the eero just handles the wifi? If so how do I do this, whats the set up process with Eero?

 

[Orcvader]

Should be possible based on this support article: https://support.eero.com/hc/en-us/articles/208276903-How-do-I-bridge-my-eeros

 

[GregI]

I decided to flood the house full of Eero Pro 6E nodes. 6 in total

You definitely did flood the house full of unneeded interference. You should have asked before doing any of this.

This should be able to give us 1 Gigabit wifi on throughout the house

No it won't. Not how you invision it anyway. You would only remotely get those speeds if you hard wired the nodes around.

my XR500 is great as a modem

Am I missing something here? You have 1 Gbps so the "modem" would be the ONT on your wall. A far simpler idea would be just connect the Eero directly to the ONT and put that 9 year old XR500 router away.

My advice? Take those 6 units back and ask for proper support.

 

[robgmun]

You definitely did flood the house full of unneeded interference. You should have asked before doing any of this.

What would you have done?

No it won't. Not how you invision it anyway. You would only remotely get those speeds if you hard wired the nodes around.

Tests i've seen showed as long as the nodes are within 30ft of each other then the 5Ghz single hardly drops

Am I missing something here? You have 1 Gbps so the "modem" would be the ONT on your wall. A far simpler idea would be just connect the Eero directly to the ONT and put that 9 year old XR500 router away.

Apologies, bad wording. Correct, the modem is the ONT on the wall, I'm referring to the router in the living room which is currently attached to the Modem. I'm using it as a hub in my media console and I wish to keep doing so. So I thought i'd just turn off the wifi on the router, attach the first node to the router and then create the mesh from there.

My advice? Take those 6 units back and ask for proper support.

Proper support from who?

 

[Firegod]

I live in a slim but tall 3-story house. At the moment I have my XR500 router on the ground floor. Very powerful for the ground floor and a pretty decent signal on the 1st. But on the top floor, the single is weak and continually drops. Getting 30Mbps max. I tried to use a powerline extender, but it was a disaster.

I decided to flood the house full of Eero Pro 6E nodes. 6 in total, 2 for each floor. This should be able to give us 1 Gigabit wifi on throughout the house (I'm on Seethelight's Gigafast 900Mbps)

But my question is, my XR500 is great as a modem and the hub in the back is useful. Can I just switch off the wifi on the XR500 and carry on using the XR500 as my main router? The the eero just handles the wifi? If so how do I do this, whats the set up process with Eero?

Yeah as @GregI says, I don't believe you need 6 nodes. I'd have thought x1 node per floor would be perfectly acceptable in a 3 story town house. A single Eero Pro 6E unit apparently will cover 2,000 sq.ft.

 

[robgmun]

Yeah as @GregI says, I don't believe you need 6 nodes. I'd have thought x1 node per floor would be perfectly acceptable in a 3 story town house. A single Eero Pro 6E unit apparently will cover 2,000 sq.ft.

The reason I went that way is because I'm going to use 5GHz throughout the house and it will go through walls. So I'm not taking any chances. Speed tests indicate that more than about 25-30ft through a wall/floor, it loses about 5% of the speed. I want to see if I can reach the top floor and still have minimal speed loss, have a couple of weeks to return it so I can mess around with and see if it works

 

[Firegod]

The reason I went that way is because I'm going to use 5GHz throughout the house and it will go through walls. So I'm not taking any chances.

Just to help, I live in an old (but modernised) property from 1920s with stone walls. x2 APs can cover this just fine. I'm just assuming here, so I might be wrong, but is your 3 story town house quite new, so just stud walls? If you are going to stick with that amount of nodes I'd ask if it is possible on the Eero devices to fine tune the transmit power so that they are not blaring out at each other at 100%. I know you just want to get the best coverage, but sometimes less is more and you can always add nodes later if you find a dead spot.

 

[robgmun]

Just to help, I live in an old (but modernised) property from 1920s with stone walls. x2 APs can cover this just fine. I'm just assuming here, so I might be wrong, but is your 3 story town house quite new, so just stud walls? If you are going to stick with that amount of nodes I'd ask if it is possible on the Eero devices to fine tune the transmit power so that they are not blaring out at each other at 100%. I know you just want to get the best coverage, but sometimes less is more and you can always add nodes later if you find a dead spot.

Possibly, what i planned to do is set the whole thing up. Then remove one or two and see how it holds up. If it does I can just refund them. If not I can leave it. I'll just take some time to play around with it

 

[Orcvader]

The reason I went that way is because I'm going to use 5GHz throughout the house and it will go through walls. So I'm not taking any chances. Speed tests indicate that more than about 25-30ft through a wall/floor, it loses about 5% of the speed. I want to see if I can reach the top floor and still have minimal speed loss, have a couple of weeks to return it so I can mess around with and see if it works

Just remember the Eeros themselves connects to each other via WiFi. So you need to make sure they're also placed in areas where they can receive a strong connection. I would try see how 2/3 go first before adding more to weaker spots.

 

[robgmun]

Just remember the Eeros themselves connects to each other via WiFi. So you need to make sure they're also placed in areas where they can receive a strong connection. I would try see how 2/3 go first before adding more to weaker spots.

Exactly how i plan to do it

I'm going to take my time to set them up one by one. Slow going up the house.

 

[GregI]

What would you have done?

Hardwire!

6 is ridiculously overkill. Infact I would be shocked if you can't get by with 2 total. An eero connected to your xr500 then another on the 2nd floor. Placement is key.

 

[maj]

As others have said 6 seems massively overkill. Are the nodes extenders or routers? Only their routers are capable of ethernet but any Eero router can be used as a hardwired node.

I'd say 2 and maybe 3 at a push should do even for a townhouse but try and use wired backhaul if you can. You can piggy back from one eero to the next if you don't have a switch.

The Eero app should tell you how your coverage is once you've added a device to your network if you stick to WiFi.

 

[WJA96]

I’m assuming that the OP actually wants 6GHz traffic at full speed in every room rather than 5GHz and if that’s the case then a unit in every room IS probably optimal. Wireless backhaul probably means the OP won’t see full connection speed in every room because the wireless backaul itself won’t do it and the comments about dialling down the 2.4GHz and 5GHz signal in each room is vital to optimise the backhaul.

So yes, for strong WiFi6E you may well need an access point in every room but you probably won’t get the outcome you’re looking for with wireless backhaul. Cable is nearly always the right answer. And for the outlay on 6 Eero 6E units you could certainly have got someone in to run a couple of cables up the outside of the building. Even in central London.