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NETGEAR Nighthawk AX3600 (MK83) Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 system
I have an existing Cable/Modem/Wifi Router Arris SBG8300 and wanted to extend my existing WiFi coverage around my house. I installed a NETGEAR Nighthawk AX3600 (MK83) Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 system, one MR80 Router and one MS80 Satellite. To avoid a double NAT setup, I disabled the WiFi function of my existing Arris Cable/Modem/WiFi Router and configured the NETGEAR Nighthawk to be in Wireless Access Point mode. I wanted to keep the Ethernet function of my existing Arris Cable/Modem/WiFi Router for the existing 4 1-gigabit Ethernet ports, so I just disabled with WiFi functions (2.4GHz & 5GHz) only. My existing Arris Cable/Modem/WiFi Router is configured as the DNS Gateway with DHCP enable and with an IP address of 192.168.0.1. My NETGEAR Access Point is configured with DHCP disabled and a static IP address of 192.168.0.2. All of my 4 physical computers connected via Ethernet just fine to the Arris Cable Modem Ethernet ports and received there necessary IP addresses from the Arris Cable/Modem DHCP Server. All of my 20 WiFi devices all connected through my NETGEAR Nighthawk AX3600 (MK83) Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 Access Point system and received there necessary IP addresses from the Arris Cable/Modem DHCP Server. Everything has been running very smoothly for a couple of months and decided I would reboot my Arris Cable/Modem and my NETGEAR Nighthawk AX3600 (MK83) Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 system. Everything rebooted and connected as before and functioning fine – sort of. My NETGEAR Nighthawk AX3600 (MR80) now has a solid red LED status light when it used to have a blue LED status light. Again, all network devices are connected, visible and working over the network. I tried to login to the NETGEAR Nighthawk AX3600 (MR80) via a Microsoft Edge browser it wouldn’t find IP Address 192.168.0.2, which I tried to ping 192.168.0.2 as well with no response. I even tried to ping 192.168.1.1 in case the NETGEAR Nighthawk defaulted back to its factory IP address, with no response.
My questions:
1) Why is the single LED light on the NETGEAR Nighthawk AX3600 red?
2) Why can’t I connect/ping 192.168.0.2?
So, I performed a hard-reset of my NETGEAR Nighthawk (MR80) and did minimal configuration before setting into Access Point mode. The network came back up all devices connected and worked fine. I then did a usual reboot of the Cable/Modem/Router and the NETGEAR MR80 & MS80, that I typically do every few months, just to keep them running clean. When I say "reboot", I mean I power down (unplug) the devices for a couple minutes. I then power the Cable/Modem/Router on for about 5 minutes to get it booted up and functioning, then I power on the NETGEAR MR80 for a couple minutes so its fully booted up and functioning, then power on the NETGEAR MS80. Again, all network devices connected and are A-O-K and no red LED status light on the MR80.
My guess as to why the NETGEAR MR80 acted unusual after I rebooted it the other day may have been due to me doing extra configuring of the WiFi & LAN settings before setting into Access Point mode, since a majority of the settings get greyed out once its in Access Point mode. This time I did minimal WiFi & LAN configuration in the MR80 before setting it into Access Point mode and didn't set a fixed IP address. It may also have been due to having, as you said, both the MR80 set with a fixed IP address and the Cablem/Modem/Router being set to assign a fixed IP address for the MR80 as well.
I'll consider the case closed.
Thanks for the assistance!
7 Replies
645Linden wrote:
My NETGEAR Access Point is configured with DHCP disabled and a static IP address of 192.168.0.2.
Talk of a "static IP address" is confusing. (It is sometimes used to describe the IP address that the ISP hands out.) What did you set and where?
If you mean "static route" then that isn't usually the way to manage an Access Point (AP).
In AP mode, the device gets its IP local address from the router.
If you want to find the IP address of an AP, the place to look is in the router's list of "attached devices".
If you want to tell your AP to use a particular IP address – to make it easy to find on your network, for example – then you use its controls to get a "fixed IP address". (The controls may warn you that this is "not recommended".) That is not the same as "static IP address" in the usual terminology.
If you do give the AP a fixed IP address, then it has to be one that the router can see and interpret.
So, back to the first question, how did you set the IP address for the AP?
By the way, if the idea is to be able to find the IP address of the AP, you could also look at Address Reservation on the router.
My NETGEAR Nighthawk access point is configured with a "fixed IP". I set this via "Advanced Setup"/"Wireless AP" where I selected "Enable fixed IP settings on this device (not recommended)". Just below this selection is where I entered the fixed IP address of 192.168.0.2.
I've tried to find the NETGEAR Nighthawk access point IP address, after I rebooted it, by way of looking inside my Arris Cable/Modem under connected devices, which shows all devices except my NETGEAR Nighthawk access point. I also tried to ping, arp -a and use an IP scanner to figure out what my access points IP address is, which no results.
645Linden wrote:
My NETGEAR Nighthawk access point is configured with a "fixed IP".
Thanks for clearing that up. Fixed is not static, which is what you originally wrote.
Have you tried leaving it "unfixed" and using a reserved address in your modem.router? Maybe it doesn't have that option.
Trying to troubleshoot the interaction between two devices isn't always easy. Might be worth looking at both sides. After all, in the MR80 is in AP mode, the main router is in charge.
