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Forum Discussion
Disabling 5GHz radio on an AX1800 MR60
Last June, 6-2020, I purchased an AX1800 kit from Costco with an MR60 router and two MS60 satellites. It started up easily and synched fine. It has been well used by our extended family. I consistently get up and down load speeds of more than 25MBps with my basic fiber-optic cable service. This fall I purchased a 2.4GHz wi-fi connected camera (an off brand Chinese manufacture from Amazon). When trying to add it to my Mesh wi-fi, I get an error saying it would not auto connect and that I should disable my 5.0GHz radio. After trying a couple Netgear product manuals, I finally found the correct one for the MR60. All the manuals, except that for the MR60 direct you to the Advanced Settings to find the check mark box to turn radios on or off. I get to the similar area of the MR60 advanced settings and find no such check box.
Am I missing something or do I need to take this issue up with the camera manufacturer?
2 Replies
Hello dandjwest,
The MR60 is a Mesh system and does not support the feature of separating/disabling the 2.4GH and 5GHz band.
Christian
Finally got a hack to work and solved my issue. Per Christian's reply to my December posting, there is no traditional way to disable, rename or reduce the power level on the 5.0 GHz radio in the Netgear MR60 Mesh router.
What I did was pursue a suggested hack based on the fact that the 2.4 GHz radio signal travels farther than the 5.0 GHz signal. Using the WiFi Analytics app from Amped Wireless, I found a location where the MR60 signal strength was a little over 40% (vs 100% next to the router). I used the camera's Access Point (AP) mode to start the setup using my android smart phone. After some aborted tries, I was able to complete the setup process and handoff to the MR60 network. To do this, I needed to "Forget" the MR60 network on my smart phone, place my phone on airplane mode when linking during the AP connection. Once the setup process was ready for the camera to connect to the MR60 network, I shutdown the airplane mode and re-entered the password for the MR60 network. All this was done with a weak (42%) signal strength from the MR60 router. Once this Wi-Fi connection was completed (it took several attempts to get it to happen) I could power down the camera and place it where I wanted to use it. Upon re-power, the camera connected to the MR60 router again and I could reach it with the camera app.
A somewhat convoluted method, but it finally worked for my needs. Guess it will take some time before the "device" industry assimilates the the new Mesh technology. It is a pity that Netgear could not have been more backwards compatible "friendly". I have probably spent a week resolving this issue.
