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My Nighthawk Extender has failed for years
So, I've had the Ex7000 for about 3 or 4 years now in my home with an Arris Surfboard wifi router. Since I first installed it, it has been nearly useless. Initially NetGear replaced it but that never...
Link to the other post I mentioned with the band-aid fix:
Well, here's what I've done. It feels like a band aid but it's working.
Since the issue appears to be a DHCP issue, any device in my home that allows me to manually set up a static IP I set up manually.
I created a spreadsheet and made sure each device doesn't share an IP with another, and I reserved them all in a specific IP range, for example, 192.168.0.50 thru 75. I manually input those static ip addresses into my devices for all SSIDS in my wifi network. So router 2.5ghz, 5ghz, and extender 2.5 and 5 ghz. This way dhcp is entirely removed from the equation as much as possible.
My router DHCP is then set up to hand out IPs between x.x.x.100 and x.x.x.150, so my static IPs aren't in the available DHCP range. This leaves some IPs available for devices to be added that simply cannot use a static ip.
Dhcp lease times in my router are set for about 8 hours. It's my understanding that about halfway through a lease, most devices will go ahead and renew their lease time, so this gets a device through the day. At night, while we're asleep, the leases expire and stay gone long enough that the router disposes of the lease info completely, so when the device connects again it shouldn't have an IP conflict.
I couldn't seem to set up a static ip on the extender itself, so instead I reserved a DHCP IP for it.
With this setup there are very few devices in my home that require DHCP - I think only 2 wifi-enabled televisions - and they get new leases every day. Everything else is statically assigned. Guests use the guest wifi which doesn't use the extender.
So for now I've had almost a month with really no problems. I did have to reboot the extender once but that's better than multiple times per day. I wish I understand where the DHCP issue was coming in to play. It was definitely an IP conflict where the router thought the device MAC was still connected and so couldn't reconnect it if it got dropped for some reason.
Since the issue appears to be a DHCP issue, any device in my home that allows me to manually set up a static IP I set up manually.
I created a spreadsheet and made sure each device doesn't share an IP with another, and I reserved them all in a specific IP range, for example, 192.168.0.50 thru 75. I manually input those static ip addresses into my devices for all SSIDS in my wifi network. So router 2.5ghz, 5ghz, and extender 2.5 and 5 ghz. This way dhcp is entirely removed from the equation as much as possible.
My router DHCP is then set up to hand out IPs between x.x.x.100 and x.x.x.150, so my static IPs aren't in the available DHCP range. This leaves some IPs available for devices to be added that simply cannot use a static ip.
Dhcp lease times in my router are set for about 8 hours. It's my understanding that about halfway through a lease, most devices will go ahead and renew their lease time, so this gets a device through the day. At night, while we're asleep, the leases expire and stay gone long enough that the router disposes of the lease info completely, so when the device connects again it shouldn't have an IP conflict.
I couldn't seem to set up a static ip on the extender itself, so instead I reserved a DHCP IP for it.
With this setup there are very few devices in my home that require DHCP - I think only 2 wifi-enabled televisions - and they get new leases every day. Everything else is statically assigned. Guests use the guest wifi which doesn't use the extender.
So for now I've had almost a month with really no problems. I did have to reboot the extender once but that's better than multiple times per day. I wish I understand where the DHCP issue was coming in to play. It was definitely an IP conflict where the router thought the device MAC was still connected and so couldn't reconnect it if it got dropped for some reason.