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Forum Discussion
RAX120 with 3 x EAX80 mesh extenders - HELP
To give a bit of context:
Previous Setup = RAX 120 router (no smart connect, AX disabled) + EAX 80 mesh extender (Fast Laneway: 2.4ghz in and 5ghz out)
Current Setup = RAX 120 router + three EAX 80 mesh extenders
The reason I bought an additional two EAX 80 mesh extenders was due to certain areas of the house having black spots and there was also no wifi in our granny flat area.
The Problem:
The Previous Setup was working fine, doing its job and didn't experience and slowness or wifi dropouts. However, the Current Setup (no matter what configuration) I've been experiencing significant slowness in speed and occasional drop outs after setting up yesterday.
I've tried various iterations/combinations of settings (AX, SmartConnect, Fast Laneway) - but still experiencing issues.
Does anyone have a similar setup, maybe with 2 mesh extenders? What settings did you use for both router and extenders?
5 Replies
How do you have them setup?
A star configuration or daisy chain?
Daisy chain: RAX120------->EAX80-------->EAX80-------->EAX80
Star: EAX80<---------RAX120--------->EAX80
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EAX80
Are all the EAX80's running in fastlane? Only one of them?
Have you tried it with just 1 eax running?
another thing to try is to disable fastlane and run them with only 1 of the mesh extenders running in mesh mode (with same ssid).
Sometimes they can end up connecting to each other instead of back to the primary router if they're to close together.
That's one of the potential problems when running multiple mesh extenders and not a full mesh system like orbi.
At the moment of writing this reply, my setup (temp) as I look more into it on the weekend is this (which is so far working..)
Router - Enable AX (on), OFDMA (both 2.4 and 5 are off), smart connect (Off). So I now have 2 SSIDs (1 for 2.4 and 1 for 5)
In terms of answering your question of "setup". This is what I plan to set up
EAX80 (1st) <------------- RAX120 ------------------> EAX80 (2nd)
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EAX80 (3rd)
Currently the 3rd extender is turned off given, I'll need to spend time to investigate over the weekend and test. But right now, router is using the above settings and both my 1st and 2nd EAX 80s have fastlane (OFF) (i.e. using "Basic" and beaming both frequencies) and with single SSID (ON). I've also managed to move my 1st EAX to another spot.
At the moment, everything is working fine and family haven't experienced any dropouts (crossing fingers).
But what would happen when I turn the 3rd EAX on? I wont be able to use the "star" formation because the 3rd one is too far away from the RAX120. I'm not sure about daisy chain either? Have you got any thoughts or ideas?
I was initially thinking of turning the the 3rd one ON and also making this "Basic" connection with fastlane (OFF). Another thing to note is the space between the 2nd and 3rd is the backyard as the 3rd one is placed in our granny flat.
Another thing you can try? give the 3rd one its own unique ssid from the others. When you're not running a true mesh system (with a controller) devices can end up connecting to the wrong extender/router. Or even give the 2nd one in the step the unique ssid. You can trial both and see how it works. I usually recommend to people needing more than 1 extender to move to an actual mesh system like Orbi since it has a main controlling device. But you're kind of already bought into it.
Did you ever get this figured out? I too am trying to run multiple EAX80s and am having issues.
Fastlane configuration can prevent the extenders connecting to themselves issue. If you configure all extenders to only connect to 2.4GHz and output in 5GHz for example, then boom - problem solved. They cannot connect to themselves, just the central router.
However, despite doing this, one of my extenders refuses to get a connection with my router. All *seems* to go well in setup, but then it complains no connection to router is established on the status page of the EAX80 extender settings. And yes, it is well within range of the router (and out of range of the other extender, as I have three floors, with the router on the first floor and the extenders on the top and bottom floors).Ah, at least now when I run through setup with the extender again, I get the attached error. But no, I do not use Access Control Lists (ACLs) in my router settings. And yes, it is well within range of my router (60% signal strength).
