A:Answer You'll still need a modem, so no. My setup has the gateway (modem + router) connected to one of these mesh units. I have an older Motorola surfboard gateway so the WiFi is still running on that, but I also have the two additional networks running on the mesh network. I thought this would be useless but it actually turned out helpful. I have most of my smart home devices running on the surfboard network (I think of it as my utility network). They don't need a ton of speed anyway, right? I then use my mesh 2.4 network for phones, smart speakers, etc. Finally, my TVs and game systems almost have exclusive access to the mesh 5.0, where they get to soak up the fastest, most media rich bandwidth.
