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WAC104 and WN2500RP strangeness

Foresthill
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WAC104 and WN2500RP strangeness

I was not sure where to post this as I can't tell for sure what is causing the problem.

 

About 2 years ago I had solar installed and the inverters are in my garage.  They communicate via the Internet with a "monitor site" which I can access to see how things are performing.  I got this all hooked up and running smoothly using a WAC104 mounted on the back wall of the garage connected to my main WNDR6300v2 router via CAT6. To get from the wall where the inverters are placed I used a WN2500RP wired via ethernet to each inverter which are configured for DHCP.  This all ran very well for at least a year or more.  To monitor this I set up a cmd file to ping the inverters each morning from my Windows 10 workstation and report on any failures, which seem to occur every couple of months or so.  When I checked the inverters they were stalling on renewal of their DHCP address.  I was able to get things operational by power cycling the Netgear devices.

 

Last week things got so bad I could not get this to run at all and had to run ethernet from the 2500 to the 104 draped along the edge of the floor while trying to diagnose the problem.

 

I updated the firmware in the 104 but that didn't help.  After countless attempts resetting the 2500 and reconnecting to the 104 they started failing on the passphrase.  I re-enterd the passphrase on the 104 and that didn't help.  I finally took my Android phone to connect to the wifi on the 104 and it failed on the passphrase which I again confirmed to be correct.  I then did a factory reset on the 104 and things stared working.  YEAH!  Not so fast, when I changed the factory defaults for SSID and passphrase it started failing again!

 

On a whim I have a WN3000RP in the laundry room next to the garage.  I didn't want to use that originally as the signal strength was pretty weak in the garage.  I took a chance, configured the 2500 to connect to the 3000 and it has been running just fine for over 4 hours.  Because of the signal strength I don't really trust this configuration but at least I'm operational and have some time to explore options for something more robust.

 

On option I was going to explore was to add the 2500 MAC addresses into the Client Access List on the 104.  The 104 log shows that "access rejected:incorrect security" message but since I had never needed it I am not sure if it's worth the trouble.  I live in a rural area so security is not that much of an issue.

 

This seems to me like the 104 needs to be replaced.  Any suggestions on further diagnosis are welcome.  If replacement is the answer, what other Netgear options should I consider?

 

 

 

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Foresthill
Aspirant

Re: WAC104 and WN2500RP strangeness

The 3700 arrived, was configured and installed and that whole part of the network is performing perfectly.  The 104 is headed for the recycling bin.

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Foresthill
Aspirant

Re: WAC104 and WN2500RP strangeness

Last night I was able to connect my Windows 10 laptop to the 2.4G network on the WAC104 and it ran normally.  It was still working fine this morning.  I used my Samsung Galaxy S10+ to successfully connect to the 2.4G SSID on the 104 but it would not connect to the 5G SSID.  The 2500 connect to the 3000 uses the 2.4G band as that is all that is offered.  I have a spare 2500 which I will configure to use only the 2.4G on the 104 and see if that will run.

Message 2 of 4
Foresthill
Aspirant

Re: WAC104 and WN2500RP strangeness

I have verified proper operation between the 2500 and the 104 as long as I avoid the 5G SSID.  I am going to order a 3700 to replace the 104, set it up as an access point in the garage and hopefully be done with this mess.

 

Message 3 of 4
Foresthill
Aspirant

Re: WAC104 and WN2500RP strangeness

The 3700 arrived, was configured and installed and that whole part of the network is performing perfectly.  The 104 is headed for the recycling bin.

Message 4 of 4
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