Wireless networks not functioning and can't access XR500 dashboard
Evening all,
Having some trouble with my XR500 and would greatly appreciate any advice. Apologies for the long post, but I'm not a networking expert by any means, and I'm not sure what's relevant and what's not. Many thanks in advance.
Context:
I have a slightly thrown-together star topology in my house. I have my ISP's modem in my ground floor living room, and because of its positioning within the house (and thick concrete walls - it's an old house), I decided to disable the wireless networks on the ISP modem, and run an ethernet cable from it to the XR500, which is in my office on the upstairs level. The XR500 supplies ethernet connections to my desktop PC and an SX10 gaming switch, as well as the 2.4 GHz and 5GHz wireless networks for the whole house.
My wife works on a laptop downstairs and uses a direct ethernet connection to the ISP modem. Everything else in the house (phones, smart devices etc connects to one of the two wireless networks). This setup normally works pretty well.
Recent Problems:
1) When checking in on the routerlogin.net dashboard a while back, there were a lot of 'unnamed devices' that I didn't recognise on my Device Manager map. This turned out to be caused by a number of Apple devices in the house using MAC randomization and locally managed OUI addresses (02:xx:xx). This didn't appear to be causing any problems with internet connectivity but it was just bugging me that I had a dozen extra "devices" clogging up space on my network map and making it annoying to manage. So I deleted as many of the ones with an OUI starting with 02:xx:xx as I could, and blocked the rest. Here's my original post on that issue:
After doing this, I also changed the password for my XR500 dashboard login, as well as for both the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz wireless networks (I hadn't done this before).
2) Since doing that, I had a 'DNS server not responding' error while using my desktop PC upstairs. I addressed that by going to 'Network and Sharing Centre' in Windows and changing my preferred DNS server to Google's DNS server (Preferred: 8.8.8.8. Alternate 8.8.4.4.) per this video. This seemed to do the trick, and I was able to re-establish the wired connection to my desktop PC. My wife has also been experiencing intermittent DNS errors, but hasn't been able to do this fix, as it's a work laptop; for the moment, these appear to have resolved themselves.
Current Problem:
At some point in the last few days, my wireless networks stopped functioning properly. As far as I can tell, none of the wifi devices in the house can connect to either the 2.4GHz or the 5GHz network (Sometimes they can connect briefly then drop off; mostly they won't connect at all. I expected they would drop off after changing the passwords, but I can't get them to re-connect).
Also, I can no longer see the XR500's dashboard when I log into routerlogin.net. When I log in, I get a message saying "You are no longer connected to your router. If your router is rebooting then keep this page open as it will automatically reconnect to the router's interface when the reboot is complete. Otherwise please check your connection e.g. you are connected to the correct router." When I refresh the page, I get a different error message saying "You may not be connected to your Router's WiFi network. To access routerlogin.com, your device must be connected to your Router's WiFi network. Check your current connection and try again." I tried clearing my browser's cache but this had no effect on the problem.
Additionally (not sure if this is relevant), when I open up my "Network" area in Windows Explorer on my desktop PC - the SX10 gaming switch icon has disappeared. It appears to still be functioning as an unmanaged switch, as my connected Xbox is still able to play youtube videos etc).
Summary
So to summarise, I can't login to my XR500 dashboard, and none of the wifi enabled devices in the house can connect to a wireless network. My PC (which has a wired connection to the XR500) and my wife's laptop (which has a wired connection to the ISP modem) are both still working for now. Apologies again for the information overload, would be super grateful if anyone could help me with this. Much appreciated.
Re: Wireless networks not functioning and can't access XR500 dashboard
Thank you for the information. Regarding the interface, when you can't access it try using the LAN IP instead which by default is 192.168.1.1 and see if you can access then. Regarding WiFi, 'forget' the WiFi credentials on each device and then try to reconnect with the new details you made and see if they connect.
