Hello,

Can someone give me a little better insite as to how to set up a wifi backhaul channel.

Just purchased / installed Archer C4000 router to replace an quirky Nighthawk router.  I already have a nighthawk EX7500 tri band mesh extender.

The Archer offers 3 distinct channels 2.4,5, 5-2.  I can rename them, name then all the same, turn them on and off, etc etc.  The mesh extender sort of, kind of, has two channels but it wants you to name them the same so you can use smartchannel or one channel or something like that.

Currently in the router I have the 2.4 channel and the 5g channel nammed the same and the 5-2 channel named 5-2.  In the extender both the 2.4 and 5 channels are named the same and the password is the same as the router.  So as I understand it, there are 4 channels (2 from the router and 2 from the extender) all named the same with the same network password that any device can choose what it prefers.

The extender says to change the 5g channel to a number between 100 -140 for best performance (supposedly a backhaul i guess).  I am confused becuase the extender doesn't seem to let me manage the connection channel and the broadcast channels seperately - its sort of all the same. 

So should I set the 5-2 to the same name and pick a channel above 100 to dedicate that as a backhaul ?   I guess that assumes that nothing else is going to connect to a channel above 100?

Does that make any sense ? 

Thanks for the help

clint