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Edembers's avatar
Edembers
Aspirant
Mar 21, 2021

EX7000 extender dropping wifi connections

I have a Starlink connection which was served by a Nighthawk R7000, which served 3x EX7000 extenders. All on the latest firmware and working perfectly, but would sometimes drop the wifi connection of the devices. Some days Android was affected, some days iPhone, although iPad seemed to work perfectly almost all the time! The PC connected by Ethernet to one of the extenders worked perfectly every time, with speeds of 50-150mb/s. After a few hours (or overnight) it would work well again.

 

I turned off Smart Connect but that made little difference. I downgraded the router firmware to 1.0.9.42 which helped some, but still didn't fix it altogether. I then removed the R7000 and started using another EX7000 in AP mode, connected to the Starlink router, which seems to work better but it's still not dependable - this morning an iPhone wouldn't connect, this afternoon an Android wouldn't. It seems very random and unpredictable which device(s) won't connect, but the PC is always connected.

 

I've now split the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks to see if that helps, I wanted them to share the SSID. If this doesn't help, does anyone have any suggestions? All extenders show green for signal strength from the AP. There are a total of about 10 devices connected. 

2 Replies

  • michaelkenward's avatar
    michaelkenward
    Guru - Experienced User
    Mar 21, 2021

    You have posted your message in the section of this community given over to Nighthawk WiFi Routers. (This is easily done, given Netgear's complicated community structure.)

    Many questions apply to different types of device, so you might get responses here, but you might get more help, and find earlier questions and answers specific to your hardware, in the appropriate section for your device. That's probably here:

    WiFi Range Extenders & Nighthawk Mesh - NETGEAR Communities

    I will ask the Netgear moderator to move your message.

    • Edembers's avatar
      Edembers
      Aspirant
      Mar 26, 2021

      Thanks for that.

       

      I've now turned on FastLane and that seems to have fixed the problems, it connects instantly instead of a turning circle for ages. I also tried connecting a Ubiquiti AP to the extender and it refused to work (it got an IP address but couldn't connect a device) until I activated FastLane. So the problem appears to be whenever 2.4GHz and 5GHz is shared, and Unifi highlights it too.

       

      I'm going to keep an eye on it.