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Forum Discussion
user-not-found
Jan 16, 2026Aspirant
M7 Pro (MR7400)... Bridge Mode/IP-Passthrough Only Works After Reboot?
As the topic says... If I reboot the router to which the M7 is attached via eth, then I have to reboot the M7 as well before bridge mode works.
Has anyone else experienced this, or the contrary; bridge mode works without having to reboot the M7?
Also.... what gives with not being able to register the product for support? Netgear product registration either fails and says try again later, or the contact us link through support says support expired on 1900-01-01... Time travel!!!!! Woo hoo! <grumble>... and these compulsory forum tags that don't include relevant products... <sigh>
10 Replies
- rcpaxLuminary
you should be able to reboot your router downstream from the M7 and it will pickup an IP after reboot. i have an M6 Pro and this is how it behaves. I imagine it's not going to be that different in the M7
- user-not-foundAspirant
Hey... thanks for responding. You are correct, it works when you reboot the M7. It's always nice to get confirmation from someone else of "works that way for me too". My point is that it only works when you reboot the M7.
When the connection drops out or the IP address becomes invalid for any reason means someone has to physically walk to the M7 and reboot it. Given the M7's ability to connect external antennae means it has many use cases where the device is not simply right in front of you. Since everything usually works as soon as it's rebooted my point is that any device should be re-issuing a DHCP request whenever a re-connection is possible... and there's no technical reason why it can't, or shouldn't.
- user-not-foundAspirant
...or at least provide the ability to manually provoke the process to run and anyone with my use-cases can implement the rest themselves.
- user-not-foundAspirant
Just re-read your post also and realized you were talking about rebooting my own router... My router does make the DHCP request upon reboot or when force it to DHCP release and request this has no impact on the M7.
I grabbed some packet captures on the eth interface between my router and the M7 and even though the M7 is sending out ARP requests for who has <my router's IP passthrough DHCP assigned address from the M7> from the 192.168.1.1 address it has, the M7 is simply not responding to my router's ARP requests for who has <M7 gateway IPv4 address>.
I've double checked my own firewall and given that I can't configure my router for layer 2 filtering I can't have a rule that is blocking the ARP requests, so it has to be something with the M7.
- rcpaxLuminary
so going back to your original problem, like i said, my M6 Pro has no issue with connectivity even if I reboot the router that is connected behind it. My device is also in IP Passthrough mode. Maybe you do a factory reset and configure it again. that usually fixes most issues. if it still behaves that way, maybe your device needs a FW update.