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Forum Discussion
EX3700 extender 5ghz won't both connect and repeat simultaneously
For some odd reason, I believed I should be able to connect the extender to the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands in my home, and then repeat them both. It seems this is a challenge. If I connect the 2.4ghz and 5ghz and ask it to repeat both, the 2.4 works fine, but no one can connect to the 5ghz. They either get stuck on obtaining an IP address, or whatever that devices default error message is. However, if I connect to the router only on the 2.4ghz and then repeat that on the 2.4 and 5ghz bands everything works, but the extender is only connected to the router on the 2.4ghz side.
This is not an ideal solution, as the 5ghz band is more reliable in my situation, so I'd prefer to connect to the router (from the extender) on that. That is also why fastlane is not enabled, my preference is the 5ghz.
I called tech support and they told me the device was faulty, I exchanged it and am having the same problem. Any ideas? Firmware is latest (I tried to update from the extenders local hosted website). Oddly enough, when I have the 5ghz and the 2.4ghz connected to the router, the firmware update page says we have no internet, when I'm just connected on 2.4 the update worked fine (it didn't need one, but didn't throw an error). This leads me to believe there is something wrong on the 5ghz side of the connection from the extender to the router, but I've factory reset multiple times, put in the correct password, it says its connected and no other device in my home has trouble connecting to the 5ghz band from the router (when they are in range of course, hence the need for the extender).
12 Replies
Hello Kapurnicus
Have you tried to lower the wireless channel of the 5ghz?
DarrenM
I have not. It is somewhere in the middle right now. I will give that a try. Can you explain why that should matter?
- Hardware Version: EX3700
- Firmware Version: V1.0.0.58_1.0.38
Having the same issue (I guess 6mo later?!). Though, the channels are shadded out, so I cannot override to try your troubleshoot technique. What is going on here?
To summarize:
- 2.4 Repeated SSID: OK
- 2.4 Connected to main SSID: OK
- 5 Repeated SSID: No connect (and noted as such in the status menu)
- 5 Connect to main SSID: OK
After lowering the wireless channel on my router for the 5ghz, the exterder connected to the 5G band just fine.
Thanks.
- I never did fix it. I've installed 3 of these and always have this problem. I'm convinced netgesr didn't test it and doesn't care.
Although my extender is a different model (3800 rather than 3700), I had exactly the same problem with 5GHz. I could never connect to the extended 5GHz signal, because it would fail to get an IP address.
I solved the problem as follows: My router had the same SSID for both bands (2.4Ghz and 5GHz.) I didn't realise that this could be an issue, but as soon as I changed the SSID of the 5GHz signal from the router (in my router's setup), the problem went away. I can now connect with no problems to either the 2.4 or 5Ghz extended signal.
Re my previous post: I realised after posting that of course by renaming the SSID of the 5GHz from the router, the extender would no longer be able to see it and would only be connected via 2.4GHz. This was confirmed when I looked at the connections using the 'mywifiext.net' status page. When I gave the extender the new 5GHz SSID for the router, I could no longer connect to the extended 5GHz signal - again it failed to get an IP address.
So all I actually succeeded in doing, was to confirm the problem as posted by the original post: it seems that if you connect extender and router via 2.4GHz only, then you can connect to both 2.4 and 5GHz extended signals, but if you connect the router and extender using both 2.4GHz and 5GHz, then it is only possible to connect to the 2.4GHz extended signal.
I'd be interested if anyone else can shed any light on this issue.
Hi, OP here. I did the same thing, tried to rename the 5ghz. All 4 of my network signals have different names. I never did fix this, and have set up one of these since with the same problem. It is a design flaw that netgear is not recognizing. Their only answer was "return it".
While the extender is not useless, it is less useful in this fashion. I wanted to extend the 5ghz, it is uneffected by cordless phones and especially microwaves. Microwave ovens operate at 2.4ghz and will kill your wifi while cooking popcorn haha. I wanted the netflix devices to work while the microwave was running, hence the 5ghz. Since I am apparently required a 2.4ghz connection either to or from the extender, because of netgear engineers being useless, this did not work for my original intention.
It does function as an extender, but only to extend your 2.4ghz network to a larger 2.4 and 5ghz band. It will not extend both from the router side apparently.
Let me know also if someone finds a fix, but I've decided to live with it. Hard to recommend products they didn't bother to test though.
