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Forum Discussion
Nighthawk MK63 Satellites dropping and IoT devices “missing”
Hi everyone,
I'm on my 2nd set of MK63's and I'm close to just giving up. I love the speed and coverage these units give me when they're working, but I haven't been able to have more than 36hrs of continuous uptime for all units since I plugged them in 5 days ago.
The satellites drop connection at night around 10pm; when one drops, the other is not far behind.
1. Using the troubleshooting steps of press sync for 2 seconds on satellite and then press sync on main unit within a minute doesn't reconnect them.
2. Disconnecting power for 60 seconds, pressing sync for 2 seconds and then pressing sync on the main unit within a minute doesn't work.
3. Disconnecting the units for upwards of 5 minutes and then pressing the factory reset using the universal paper clip tool for 60 seconds, then pressing sync on the satellite followed by pressing the sync on the main unit doesn't work either.
The only thing that has worked consistently is to have the satellites powered off all night and reconnect them in the morning, which is a rather bad solution. Throughout all this the main router unit (MR60) does not have any issues.
When the mesh system is working, I have IoT devices that are showing as offline in their respective apps but showing as connected with good/great signal strength in the nighthawk app. I checked for ip conflicts, but so far have not found any with duplicate ip.
I've included some more info below. Any help would be highly appreciated!
Thanks in advance.
What mesh system are you using?
- MK63 (the 3 piece set from Costco: 1 x MR60, 2 x MS60)
And what firmware is on it?
- v1.0.6.102 on all devices, I checked on routerlogin.net and nighthawk app.
What are you attempting to connect it to.
- Around 45 IoT devices throughout the house. Typically 40 are connected at all times, sometimes it spikes up to 50 due to the needs of some devices.
How far apart are the devices?
- single level house, about 50ft between main unit and one satellite, inbetween and slightly to the side is the other satellite. They form a triangle with a very wide base and a short rise.
What speed is your connection?
- 300mbps down / 300mbps up or better, based on speed tests from the nighthawk app. I have fiber to the house, cat6 to the gigabit capable modem, cat6 from modem to the MR60.
1 Reply
I had satelitte to router connection issues on prior firmware versions and when router and satelitte were on different firmware verisons (auto update seemed to allow this to happen). I'm on firmware V1.0.6.102_2.0.45 (the latest at the time I'm writing this) for both router and satelittes with no satelitte disconnect issues. I have a large number of IoT devices connected; car charger, Nest thermostat, garage door, Wyze camera, Squeezeboxes, etc. Some have the ability to be monitored and notified on outage; car charger. In addition, I use Ombi to organize my home which has the built-in the ability to monitor devices with some limitations (I believe it uses client rather than server based polling - only works when client is being used). I'm fairly confident external server based polling (car charger) notifications are very reliable. While working from home my browser based notification allow me to poll more devices. Based on that polling information I notice that devices (both IoT and laptops) are disconnected from satelittes from time to time. After several hours they will reconnect. Rebooting resolves the issue for some time. Other than that I don't have many details at the moment but suspect it is a satelitte firmware bug.