WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

CakalangFufu
Aspirant
May 13, 2020
Razor512 wrote:
Which channel is your RAX40 set to? The EX8000 needs to use the upper part of the 5GHz band for best reliability, and must not use DFS channels.
Thanks for the reply.
Hi following the tech support suggestion, he asked me to set my RAX40 5Ghz Channel to 164 but in my RAX40 settings the highest channel is only 128.

You may need to set your router to 80MHz channel width to unlock channels such as channel 149. (which will not be available on 160MHz which the EX8000 does not use)
How do I unlock the 80MHz channel width?
Also, currently all of my EX8000 channel options are all DFS channel.

Also try using the IP address of the EX8000 and not the DNS address which does not work as reliably.
Using the IP Adress to what?
(Sorry newbie here)
- Razor512
  Prodigy
  May 13, 2020
  For netgear routers often they will determine channel width based on max PHY rate, thus you may have to choose a lower rate in the mode setting, e.g., if it is set to 2400Mbps, then you will have to selectthe 2nd fastest speed.
  
  Though this also meanns that if you are using an 802.11ax WiFi adapter such as the Intel AX200, then you will not get the full AX performance and your real world throughput will top out at around 900Mbps. If you are using 802.11ac clients then you will not notice any throughput reduction from selecting the second highest PHY rate, since it will still be at the max rate supported by 802.11ac.
  
  As for DFS channels, it is harder to connect to them since you cannot actively probe, because of this, if the beacon from the AP is sent over the DFS channel then you will only see the network when a beakon transmission happens to coenside with the timings for when the client deivce allocates ait time to listen for the beacon, and if the timing does not match up, nothing is seen until the next beacon and listen window comes up.
  
  As for the DNS address, if you have any custom DNS server specified, sometimes it will cause the mywifiext type addresses to not redirect properly to the EX8000. If that is the case for you, then the best solution is to just use the IP address of the extender instead, and use that for the initial setup, but if the addres works reliably then you can continue with it (especially if you don't have a custom DNS server set, and are not using something like a VPN where they may not always properly do a split tunned to avoid sending local traffic over the tunnel.
  
  Overall, if you get a chance this is a summary of the changes to test.
  
  Select the 2nd highest speed in the mode for the 5GHz radio
  Set the channel of the router to 149
  Apply those changes and do a fresh setup of the EX8000.
  Also make sure the router is using WPA2-Personal [AES]
- Razor512
  Prodigy
  May 13, 2020
  Hmm seems my reply may not have gone through, not sure why.
  
  But as a troubleshooting step, try the following.
  
  Set the mode for the 5GHz radio from "Up to 2400 Mbps" to "Up to 1200 Mbps"
  Then set the channel to 149 if allowed in your location.
  Make sure the security is set to WPA2 Personal
  Then perform a fresh setup of the EX8000 and see if it will proprly connect to the 5GHz band.
  - CakalangFufu
    Aspirant
    May 14, 2020
    Thank you, Razor512
    Set the mode for the 5GHz radio from "Up to 2400 Mbps" to "Up to 1200 Mbps"
    It has been like this from the beginning.
    
    Then set the channel to 149 if allowed in your location.
    I set it to the highest channel 128
    
    Make sure the security is set to WPA2 Personal
    Then perform a fresh setup of the EX8000 and see if it will proprly connect to the 5GHz band.
    The security is WPA2-PSK [AES]
    Still not resolved the issue.

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WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router