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Forum Discussion
M1 Netgear Nighthawk not recognized by Asus RT-AC68U
The RT-AC68U (AC-1900), issued by T-Mobile USA, is capable of connecting to the Netgear Unite hotspot via RNDIS. RNDIS creates a virtual ethernet connection on top of the USB connection.
However, the Netgear Nighthawk M1 is not recognized by the AC-1900 either as USB or ethernet. I have not tested this with other routers, but it presents a problem if I want to use the Nighthawk as an LTE modem, connected to another LAN.
3 Replies
Is your intention to use the RT-AC68U only as an access point? If so, why not use the Ethernet port on the M1 instead of the USB port? I've got my M1 connected via its Ethernet port to an unmanaged Gigabit Ethernet switch, into which I have 2 dual-band WiFi access points connected and also wired Ethernet connections to a desktop PC and a printer. The M1 has DHCP enabled and I've therefore disabled the DHCP in the access points (which are in fact full modem/routers with modified set-up). This works fine - the WiFi range of the M1 is understandably somewhat limited due to its size and internal antennas so the access points give me full coverage around the house. The only current issues are that the M1's Ethernet port goes to sleep after a period of no activity (it can be woken by tapping the power button once) and the Ethernet port is switched off by default after a reboot. However, according to this post by a Netgear moderator, there will be a firmware update in Feb that will solve these two issues.
My intention was to use USB only to get the RT-AC68U to self-populate the configurations for the Nighthawk, but it did not recognize the USB beyond a charger. It didn't recognize the Nighthawk through ethernet, or through a bridge with these setup:
Nighthawk-Ethernet-Laptop-USB-RT-AC68U
Nighthawk-USB-Laptop-Ethernet-RT-AC68U
Wireless access was possible for the laptop but not the router. Because of this, I do not know where to start troubleshooting, router or M1. The Unite Explore, a Netgear device I do not have, reportedly works out of the box with this router, and I have to enable RNDIS on my smartphone for the RT-AC68U to detect and use it as a WAN. So I know it recognizes RNDIS and because the Unite has it, the M1 should support this protocol as well. But nothing in the user's guide mentions it.
This forum discussion seems to indicate problems connecting the Unite Explore (Air Card 815S) to the Asus AC68U. Also, it may be wrong to assume that the M1 supports RNDIS even if the 815S does. I don't know the AC68U but this discussion states that it's easy to toggle it to AP mode after assigning it an IP address - Ethernet connection would probably be to the Lan1 port, although I've read that these Asus devices when set into AP mode turn the WAN port to a LAN port, giving an extra LAN connection. This Asus support page explains how to set up AP mode (actually on the RT-N56U but probably the same), which apparently automatically disables the firewall, IP sharing and NAT functions. I gave my APs static IP addresses outside the DHCP range of the M1, which I think by default is 192.168.1.20 upwards. The M1's own IP address is 192.168.1.1 by default so obviously don't use this on the AP (I'm not using IP pass-through on the M1). I've turned off WPS and Smart Setup (different router from yours), and have selected fixed 5GHz and 2.4GHz channels that differ from the default channels that the M1 tends to auto-select. My reasoning for doing this was that if the APs and the M1 were all auto-selecting channels, they could be constantly swapping around - this might be a false assumption.
I apologise if I've missed the point of your question but hope this helps.